BEIJING - More than 367 people died and almost 2,000 were injured when a strong earthquake hit southwest China’s mountainous Yunnan province Sunday, bringing homes crashing to the ground and sparking a massive relief operation.
The quake in Zhaotong prefecture, in the province’s northeast, toppled buildings and left rescue teams and residents to pull survivors from beneath the rubble, images on social media showed.
“At least 367 people have been killed and 1,881 people were injured,” the official news agency Xinhua reported early Monday, citing rescuers and raising a previous toll given minutes earlier of 357.
The US Geological Survey (USGS) reported the quake at a magnitude of 6.1 and said it struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres at 4:30 pm (0830 GMT).
“Too many buildings were damaged and we are collecting data on deaths and injuries,” Xinhua quoted local official Chen Guoyong as saying in the township of Longtoushan, which sits at the epicentre.
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