God tells China to FREE TIBET.

[raum]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24573168/

MSNBC News Services
updated 42 minutes ago
CHONGQING, China - A massive earthquake struck central China on Monday, killing more than 8,500 people and trapping nearly 900 students under the rubble of their school, state media reported.

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake was among the worst to strike China in decades, devastating a hilly region of small cities and towns 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.

Xinhua said 80 percent 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 was one of the deadliest in three decades and 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.

Middle of the school day
Monday’s quake hit 60 miles northwest of Chengdu in the middle of the school day, toppling at least eight schools, leaving hundreds of students and teachers trapped, state media said. There were several smaller aftershocks, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site.

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 percent 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 Aug. 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.

‘Crying out for help’
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.”

[AYHJA]

Damn, that little part of the world has been catching all kinds of hell here lately...