At least 300 people have died and others are trapped under rubble after a magnitude-6.9 earthquake struck China's Qinghai province, officials say.
The powerful tremor hit remote Yushu county, 500km south-west of provincial capital Xining, at 0749 (2349 GMT).
Chinese TV showed wrecked buildings and people scrabbling through debris, as the government began a rescue misssion.
Yushu is hundreds of miles from an airport, and it is thought rescue crews may take time to reach the quake zone.
"Soldiers have been dispatched to save the people buried in the collapsed houses," local official Huang Limin was quoted as saying by China's state news agency Xinhua.
BBC map
A Yushu resident told Reuters news agency rescuers were trying to pull survivors from buildings.
"A lot of one-storey houses have collapsed. Taller buildings have held up, but there are big cracks in them," he said.
One official told journalists more than 85% of buildings near the epicentre had collapsed.
The official added that "a lot of students" had been buried after part of a vocational school collapsed......... http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8619046.stm
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