PANZHIHUA, Sichuan, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Twenty-two people were dead after an earthquake measuring 6.1 on the Richter scale hit Panzhihua City in southwest China on Saturday.

As of 9 p.m., 17 people were reported dead and about 100 others injured in Sichuan, and five others dead and 26 other injured in neighboring Yunnan Province.

The quake struck the juncture of Renhe District of Panzhihua and Huili County of Liangshan Prefecture at 4:30 p.m. (Beijing time). The epicenter was about 50 km southeast of downtown Panzhihua, at 26.2 degrees north and 101.9 degrees east and at a depth of 10 km, the National Seismograph Network Center said.

In Panzhihua, a 54-year-old man was killed in debris in Miyi County and another person was killed Yanbian County. Nearly 1,000 houses were destroyed and cracks appeared in walls of more than 400 houses.

In the affected counties of Liangshan Prefecture, 86 people were injured, and many houses were destroyed or in dangerous conditions. The number of people buried in the ruins were not immediately available.

The quake also affected Chuxiong Prefecture in Yunnan Province, leaving five people dead and 26 others were injured, 11 severely, as of 8:30 p.m., said Mengfu, a prefecture government official.

The casualties in Yunnan were reported in Yongren, Yuanmou, Wuding and Dayao counties, in which four deaths were in Yuanmou, about 55 km from the epicenter, and another in Yongren, about 30 km from the epicenter.

"Locals in the county rushed out into the open. Cracks appeared on house walls and many windows were broken," said Zheng Zhouwei, a local legislator in Yongren.

Yunan's capital, Kunming, about 150 km from the epicenter, and Sichuan's capital of Chengdu both felt the tremor.

Another above magnitude-6 quake was not expected in the stricken area in the next two weeks, said Liu Jie, an expert at the National Seismograph Network Center.

Working teams from China Earthquake Administration, and Sichuan and Yunnan provincialearthquake bureaus were heading for the stricken area.

Heavy rain and rugged terrain greatly hampered the rescue efforts.

Due to poor communication, detailed casualties were still under calculation.

An average 118 people live on one sq km in the quake-stricken area.
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