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More than 200 are injured and 1,000 houses and apartment buildings toppled in southwest area.
A woman mourns for her loss after an earthquake jolted Yingjiang County in southwestern China’s Yunnan Province on Thursday.
AP PHOTO
BEIJING — A magnitude 5.8 earthquake toppled more than 1,000 houses and apartment buildings in China’s southwest near the border with Myanmar on Thursday, killing at least 24 people and injuring more than 200, officials and state media said.
Photos from the scene showed buildings that buckled, crushing their lower floors. Police, firefighters and soldiers rushed to the area to pull out people trapped in the rubble, including a man and girl stuck in the stairwell of a four-story building, according to state broadcaster China Central Television.
Parts of a supermarket and a hotel caved in, while sidewalks were lined with injured on blankets, being shielded from the sun by large vendor umbrellas.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported that 24 people had been killed, including four students, citing the Yingjiang county government in Yunnan province. Another 207 people were injured, 33 of them in critical condition.
About 1,200 houses or apartments were crushed by the quake.