Sichuan rocked again by massive earthquake Scores dead in China earthquake A 6.6 magnitude earthquake hits a remote, mountainous area of China killing at least 100 and injuring more than 2,000. Sarah Charlton reports. Dozens of people have been killed and more than 1000 injured in an earthquake that hit China's southwestern Sichuan province, five years after a massive quake devastated the area. The shallow quake struck on Saturday near Lushan county in the city of Ya'an on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau just after 8am, setting off landslides, destroying homes and triggering a major rescue operation. Just over seven hours after the quake struck the death toll stood at 100, CCTV News said, citing the China Earthquake Administration. Standstill: A boulder blocks the road after a powerful earthquake jolted China's Sichuan province on Saturday. Lushan authorities estimate that numbers of the injured range from 1000 to 2200, while the provincial government said more than 10,000 homes were destroyed. Local seismologists registered the quake at magnitude 7.0 while the US Geological Survey gave it as 6.6 at a depth of 12 kilometres. More than 260 aftershocks followed, the People's Daily said on its website. The shaking was felt in the provincial capital Chengdu, 110 kilometres to the east, and even in the megacity of Chongqing several hundred kilometres away. Panicked residents fled into the streets, some of them still in their slippers and pyjamas. Members of my family were woken up. They were lying in bed when the strong shaking began and the wardrobes began shaking strongly," said a Chongqing resident surnamed Wang. We grabbed our clothes and ran outside. About 6000 soldiers and police were heading to the area to help rescue work, the Xinhua news agency said. Some had to contend with roads blocked by debris, CCTV reported, while one military vehicle carrying 17 troops plummeted over a cliff, killing one soldier and injuring seven others, Xinhua said. "There are mountains on all sides, it is very easy to trigger mudslides and very dangerous," one user wrote on Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter. The disaster evoked comparisons to the 2008 Sichuan quake, the country's worst in decades, which left 87,000 people missing or dead, and President Xi Jinping ordered all-out efforts to minimise casualties. Premier Li Keqiang arrived in Sichuan in the afternoon and was taking a helicopter to the quake zone. "The current most urgent issue is grasping the first 24 hours since the quake's occurrence, the golden time for saving lives," he said. Amid the rescue efforts, a 30-year-old pregnant woman surnamed Zhao was pulled out of the rubble along with a young child and sent to hospital for treatment, the People's Daily said on its Weibo account. A local TV journalist due to get married on Saturday turned up instead for work and a photograph of her reporting on the disaster in her wedding dress with bright make-up and a corsage was widely circulated on Weibo.