60,000 evacuated after China quake kills 19

CHENGDU, China: China on Wednesday evacuated nearly 60,000 people in its mountainous southwest after a strong earthquake killed at least 19 people, rattling a region where memories of a 2008 seismic disaster remain fresh.

The 6.5-magnitude earthquake struck Sichuan province late on Tuesday, tearing cracks in mountain highways, triggering landslides, damaging buildings and sending panicked residents and tourists fleeing into the open.

The provincial government said Wednesday afternoon that most of the tourists -- many stranded at a popular national park near the epicentre -- have been evacuated after spending a nervous night out in the open as more than 1,000 aftershocks rippled across the region.

Locals will also be moved to safer ground, according to the authorities. The area’s difficult geography -- and travel restrictions quickly imposed by authorities -- have so far prevented a clear picture of the scale of the disaster from emerging, but there were no reports of catastrophic damage or large-scale casualties by Wednesday afternoon.

The quake killed at least 19 people and injured at least 247, 40 of them seriously, according to the local government of Aba prefecture where the epicentre was located. Two foreign nationals, a French man and a Canadian woman, are among the injured.

Images on social media or in state news outlets showed cars and buses tossed into ravines or crushed by giant boulders jolted loose from surrounding hills, and rescue personnel combing through rubble for any victims.