Earthquake Kills Over 900 in China

BEIJING--Military rescue teams and doctors yesterday worked to reach a remote and mountainous southern region where the government said China's worst earthquake in 12 years had killed more than 900 people.

An employee at the Ministry of Civil Affairs told the British Broadcasting Corporation and other reporters today that the death toll from Sunday's quake had reached 939. The quake registered 7.6 on the Richter scale, indicating a temblor of tremendous and devastating strength.

However, the ministry later denied issuing the figure, apparently because it had been issued without permission. Other government offices in Beijing and the afflicted province, Yunnan, refused to answer questions about the quake, effectively imposing a news blackout.

Sun Shaocheng of the ministry's emergency rescue office said he could only confirm state-run radio's earlier report that more than 600 people were killed.

"The number is climbing," he said, adding that he had no new figures.

The State Seismology Bureau said there were 40 aftershocks in the stricken sub-tropical area, the strongest measuring 7.2.

The quake was centered in Yunnan's heavily forested Lancang and Menglian counties, about 240 miles southwest of the provincial capital of Kunming and just inside the border with Burma.

Many of the casualties are believed to be from the Lahu minority, a Tibetan-Burmese hill people who are mainly subsistence farmers and hunters. They have their own language and are Buddhist.

Yunnan, with a land area nearly as large as California, has a population of more than 34 million. Lahus in the province number about 300,000. Lancang's population is about 30,000.

Most of the region's mud and wood homes are built on stilts because of its heavy rains and would have little chance of surviving a major quake.

A quake of 7.6 on the Richter scale would cause severe damage in a populated area. The scale is a gauge of energy released by an earthquake, with a reading of 7.0 10 times as powerful as a 6.0, which is also capable of inflicting heavy damage.

The official Xinhua News Agency has remained silent about the quake since issuing a late-night statement Monday that Premier Li Peng expressed sympathy to the victims and that State Councilor Song Jian had been dispatched to oversee rescue work.

On Monday, Xinhua said the temblor had killed 37 people, injured more than 100 and destroyed most of the houses in Lancang and Menglian counties. Buildings were destroyed in 14 surrounding counties and road links to the outside were cut but were being repaired, Xinhua said.

The death figure of 600 would be China's highest since July 28, 1976, when 242,000 people were killed in the northeast China city of Tangshan in the nation's worst natural disaster in modern times.

That quake measured 7.8 on the Richter scale.

The last major quake was on August 23, 1985, when a 7.4 temblor killed 71 people and injured 125 in the far western Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A quake measuring 5.0 occurred October 15 in southern Yunnan, which is hit frequently by earth tremors, but there were no reports of casualties.

Seismologists said they did not know if the Yunnan quakes were related to a powerful temblor that hit far western China on Saturday.

That quake, measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale, was centered in an uninhabited area of the Tanggula Mountains in western Qinghai province and northern Tibet.