At least 67 dead and over 700 injured in earthquake in China

At least 67 people died and 731 were injured by two earthquakes that shook a mountainous region in southwest China on Friday, toppling buildings and forcing many people to take to the streets, officials said, and observers. The people of the region described how people ran out of buildings to the screams when earthquakes were felt in the border of the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou in southwest China. The images broadcast on television showed hundreds of residents of the city of Yiliang (Yunnan Province) gathered in the street and refusing to go back into the buildings. In photographs published on the Internet can be planted streets of bricks, tiles and rubble, many cracked walls, fallen boulders important on a route and clouds of dust because of the aftershocks. See also wounded which have showered first aid arriving at the entrance of a local hospital. The authorities sent hundreds of tents and shelters and the balance of 67 confirmed dead.Premier Wen Jiabao is traveling to the area, said the agency New China. The Yiliang county government said on its website that 556 people were injured, while a statement from the authorities of the city of Zhaotong, also in the area, said they were 150. The authorities of the town indicated that 100,000 people left homeless by the tragedy and that at least 20,000 houses collapsed or were damaged. Some 700,000 people are affected by the quake, said. The death toll could rise because many villages are isolated, said China New citing local authorities. "The earthquake was particularly intense in the constituency of Yiliang and Jiaokui the three regions, and Qiaoshan Luozehe," the local government of Yiliang. "Transport is disturbed in some areas and communications are also affected," he added. Pugang Huang, head of the Geological Survey of Yunnan Province, also told China News that the balance may increase due to the large population density in the area with 205 inhabitants per square kilometer. The buildings of rural Chinese are often built with inferior materials and it is very rare earthquake standards are respected. Besides the epicenter of two major earthquakes was located only 5-15 km from the district headquarters, he said, noting that probably the slum dwellings were not built to withstand strong earthquakes. According to the Chinese seismological agency, the epicenter was located at the border of the provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou to a depth of 14 km and assessed the magnitude 5.7 quake. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) recorded the first tremor at 11h20 local time (03H20 GMT) at a depth of 10 km and the second an hour later. The magnitude was 5.6 for both. The region suffers regular earthquakes. In 2008 an earthquake of magnitude 8 struck neighboring Sichuan province which left some 70,000 dead and 18,000 missing. In China there was one of the deadliest earthquakes in history, in the Tangshan region (northeast), in 1976. According to official figures, the balance of that quake was of 242,000 dead, but other sources indicate that the total number of victims was three times more important.