AMN /
At least five people were killed and over 70 were injured after the earthquake jolted Jiuzhaigou County in Sichuan at 9:19 p.m. Tuesday (Beijing Time), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.
A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Unofficial reports said that 100 people are feared dead and thousands injured. The condition of 30 hospitalized injured were stated to be serious.
Xinhua news agency said citing a China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) statement that five among the dead were visitors to the popular tourist destination of Jiuzhaigou national park. The massive earthquake struck at 9:19 PM, local time, yesterday and the epicenter was monitored at a depth of 20 km, it said. Jiuzhaigou, or Jiuzhai Valley, is a national park known for spectacular waterfalls and karst formations.
Hours after the last night’s 7- magnitude, another 6.6-magnitude earthquake jolted the Jinghe County in northwest China’s Xinjiang this morning at 7.27.
President Xi Jinping has called for all-out efforts to rapidly organise relief work and rescue the injured people.Premier Li Keqiang also urged local authorities to go all out in relief and monitoring work.
China’s cabinet, the State Council, has sent a national work team to the disaster-hit area to guide relief work. Local governments have also activated top-level emergency response
procedures.The local government has organised tourist coaches and private-owned vehicles to rush to the affected areas to help transport the stranded tourists. Power, communication and water supply in the county seat have basically recovered.
More than 34,000 people visited the tourist attraction yesterday. So far, 31,500 tourists have been relocated to safe places. Officials, however, feared the death toll could be much higher as rescue work peaks today morning. Sichuan is a quake-prone region. In May 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck Wenchuan and killed more than 80,000 people. In 2013, a 7.0-magnitude quake hit Lushan, in which 196 people were killed.