BEIJING — China's worst earthquake in nearly three decades killed nearly 9,000 people Monday. The Chinese government, sensitive to accusations it did not move quickly enough in previous disasters, immediately launched a massive relief effort.
The 7.8-magnitude quake trapped nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school and devastated a hilly region in Sichuan and nearby provinces. The official Xinhua News Agency said 8,533 people died in Sichuan and dozens of other deaths were reported elsewhere.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao boarded a plane within hours of the quake and later arrived in the provincial capital of Chengdu. Thousands of army troops and paramilitary People's Armed Police carrying medical supplies were also headed to the region, state television said.
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"My fellow Chinese, facing such a severe disaster, we need calm, confidence, courage and efficient organization," Wen said while en route to the disaster. "I believe we can certainly overcome the disaster with the public and the military working together under the leadership of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the government."
"This is one of the most decisive responses you will see in any country," said Dali Yang, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore.
The quake comes less than 90 days before the Olympic Games in Beijing, which the Communist government has touted as a chance to show off its economic might and logistical prowess.
The government set up a new disaster management office this spring after winter storms paralyzed the country in January and February, Yang said.
"They really learned from the snowstorms," Yang said. "Wen Jiabao has good political sense. He wants to be seen helping, and he knows he will get more resources mobilized by going there."
In Washington, President George W. Bush said the United States was ready to help.
"I extend my condolences to those injured and to the families of the victims of today's earthquake. I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy.
"The United States stands ready to help in any way possible," Bush said in a statement.
Xinhua said 80% of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan county in Sichuan province after the quake, raising fears the overall death toll could increase sharply.
A chemical plant collapsed in Shifang city, to the northeast of the quake's epicenter, burying hundreds of people and sending more than 80 tons of toxic liquid ammonia leaking from the site, state media reported.
The earthquake sent thousands of people rushing out of buildings and into the streets hundreds of miles away in Beijing and Shanghai. The temblor was felt as far away as Pakistan, Vietnam and Thailand.
The quake posed a challenge to a government already grappling with discontent over high inflation and a widespread uprising among Tibetans in western China while trying to prepare for the Beijing Olympics this August.
It hit about 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the afternoon when classrooms and office towers were full. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its website.
The temblor struck hilly country leading up to the Tibetan highlands, toppling buildings in small cities and towns in the largely rural area. About 1,200 pandas — 80% of the surviving wild population in China — live in several mountainous areas of Sichuan.
The earthquake occurred in an area with numerous fault lines that have triggered destructive temblor before. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake in Diexi, Sichuan that hit on August 25, 1933 killed more than 9,300 people.
Xinhua said 50 bodies had been pulled from the debris of the school building in Juyuan town but did not say if the children were alive. Xinhua reported students also were buried under five other toppled schools in Deyang city.
Xinhua said its reporters saw buried teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building in Juyuan "while others were crying out for help."
Two girls were quoted by Xinhua as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."
Photos showed heavy cranes trying to remove rubble from the ruined school. Other photos posted on the Internet and found on the Chinese search engine Baidu showed arms and a torso sticking out of the rubble of the school as dozens of people worked to free them, using their hands to move concrete slabs.
Calls into the city did not go through as panicked residents quickly overloaded the telephone system. The quake affected telephone and power networks, and even state media appeared to have few details of the disaster.
"In Chengdu, mobile telecommunication convertors have experienced jams and thousands of servers were out of service," said Sha Yuejia, deputy chief executive officer of China Mobile.
Although it was difficult to telephone Chengdu, an Israeli student, Ronen Medzini, sent a text message to The Associated Press saying there were power and water outages there.
"Traffic jams, no running water, power outs, everyone sitting in the streets, patients evacuated from hospitals sitting outside and waiting," he said.
Xinhua said an underground water pipe ruptured near the city's southern railway station, flooding a main thoroughfare. Reporters saw buildings with cracks in their walls but no collapses, Xinhua said.
The earthquake also rattled buildings in Beijing, some 930 miles to the north, less than three months before the Chinese capital was expected to be full of hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors for the Summer Olympics.
Many Beijing office towers were evacuated, including the building housing the media offices for the organizers of the Olympics, which start in August. None of the Olympic venues was damaged.
"I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt," said James McGregor, a business consultant who was inside the LG Towers in Beijing's business district. "The floor was moving underneath me."
In Fuyang, 660 miles to the east, chandeliers in the lobby of the Buckingham Palace Hotel swayed. "We've never felt anything like this our whole lives," said a hotel employee surnamed Zhu.
Patients at the Fuyang People's No. 1 Hospital were evacuated. An hour after the quake, a half-dozen patients in blue-striped pajamas stood outside the hospital. One was laying on a hospital bed in the parking lot.
Skyscrapers in Shanghai swayed and most office occupants went rushing into the streets.
In the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, 100 miles off the southeastern Chinese coast, buildings swayed when the quake hit. There were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.
The quake was felt as far away as the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi, where some people hurried out of swaying office buildings and into the streets downtown. A building in the Thai capital of Bangkok also was evacuated after the quake was felt there.
A magnitude 7.8 earthquake is considered a major event, capable of causing widespread damage and injuries in populated areas.
The last serious earthquake in China was in 2003, when a 6.8-magnitude quake killed 268 people in Bachu county in the west of Xinjiang.
China's deadliest earthquake in modern history struck the northeastern city of Tangshan on July 28, 1976, killing 240,000 people.
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