CNN - Report: 3,000 feared dead in China quake

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Report: 3,000 feared dead in China quake

At least 3,000 people are feared dead in Monday's earthquake in China's Sichuan Province, state-run news agency Xinhua said.

Citing local officials, Xinhua said at least 3,000 were thought to be dead in Beichuan County, part of Sichuan Province.

Earlier, Xinhua had said at least 107 people died in the 7.8-magnitude quake that rocked central China and left several hundred students feared buried in collapsed school buildings.

The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.

Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.

At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.

"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting."

Among the 107 dead were 55 in Sichuan Province, where 600 people were also injured, Xinhua said.

One person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell, the news agency reported.

Xinhua did not detail where the 107 deaths occurred, although it reported earlier that four students were killed and 110 hurt when a middle school building collapsed in Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) southeast of the epicenter.

Another person was killed when a water tower fell in the city of Mianyang, the news agency reported.

A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County, Xinhua reported.

The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.

Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work.

Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 60 miles from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.

"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.

The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.

"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said.

In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.

An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

Tangshan is roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.

After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 950 miles (1,528 km) from the epicenter.

They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.

"Our building began to sway," he said.

Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.

At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT, 0228 ET), the USGS reported.

A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 400 miles east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.

The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.