Beijing (Agencies): At least 12 people were killed and about 134 others were injured after a strong 6.0-magnitude earthquake hit southwest China on Tuesday as rescuers pulled bodies and survivors from wrecked buildings.
More than 4,000 people were relocated as dozens of structures were damaged or collapsed following late Monday’s earthquake outside Yibin in Sichuan province, according to the city government.
State broadcaster CCTV showed footage of rescuers bringing a survivor out of the rubble of a building on a stretcher overnight. Other images showed a woman being helped out of another collapsed structure.
Images from Changning County showed an electricity pole knocked down on the roof of a building, a hole in a brick home and broken windows on the street.
Cracks appeared in several highways and a major highway connecting Yibin and Xuyong County was closed, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
Xinhua reported overnight that a hotel close to the epicentre collapsed, but there was no immediate word of any casualties.
An early warning alarm system was triggered in the provincial capital Chengdu about one minute before the earthquake struck, Xinhua said. The alert rang 10 seconds before it hit Yibin.
Nine people died in Changning County and three others in Qixian County, the Yibin city government said in its Twitter-like Weibo account, up from an initial death toll of six overnight. Rescuers pulled six bodies and seven survivors from buildings, it said.