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Published on Monday, May 12, 2008
By Jake Hooker and Jim Yardley
CHENGDU, China - A powerful earthquake struck western China on Monday, toppling thousands of homes, factories and offices, trapping students in schools, and killing at least 10,000 people, the country's worst natural disaster in three decades.
The quake, which was estimated preliminarily to have had a magnitude of 7.9, ravaged a mountainous region outside Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, just after lunchtime Monday, destroying 80percent of structures in some of the towns and small cities near its epicenter, Chinese officials said. Its tremors were felt as far away as Vietnam and set off another, smaller quake on the outskirts of Beijing, 900 miles away.
Landslides, power outages and fallen mobile-phone towers left much of the affected area cut off from the outside world and limited information about the damage. But snapshots of concentrated devastation suggested that the death toll could rise markedly as rescuers reach the most heavily damaged areas
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