A strong earthquake hit a remote mountainous area of China Wednesday, killing about 300 people and burying many more including children in the debris of toppled mud-and-wood houses and a school. Another 8,000 people were injured in the quake of at least 6.9-magnitude which also disrupted telecommunications, knocked out electricity and triggered landslides in the northwestern Qinghai province, local officials said. A official in the provincial government press office told selfnews that about 300 had been confirmed dead, with 8,000 more hurt, as rescue teams worked with their bare hands to clear the debris. 'The injured are everywhere in the street, a lot of people are bleeding from head wounds,' the Xinhua news agency quoted another local official, identified as Zhuohuaxia, as saying from the town of Jeigu. The quake wreaked havoc on the flimsy earth and wood houses near the epicentre in Yushu county, a high-altitude area near the border with Tibet and at least 12 hours by road from the provincial capital. Among the casualties were children trapped under the rubble of their school. 'We're in the process of trying to rescue the students from the Yushu primary school. There are about 20 children buried in the debris,' Kang Zifu, a local fire department official, was quoted telling state television. 'We're hurrying to help them... We're also working on the Jiegu commerce and industry department office, where there are about 40 to 50 people buried. They are alive, and we've had contact with them.' He said at least 32 people had been pulled alive from the debris. Rescue teams and equipment were being rushed to the area, Xinhua said, but noted they could be hampered by the infrastructure damage, which included roads blocked by landslides from the region's towering mountains. Zhuohuaxia said more than 85 percent of houses had collapsed in Jiegu, a town in Yushu county. 'There is a big crack in the Yushu Hotel, the four-storey meeting hall of the prefecture government has collapsed,' he said. Zhuohaixia was earlier quoted saying a vocational school had also collapsed, but it was not clear whether they were part of the same campus. State television broadcast images showing heavy damage to concrete buildings, with some apparently levelled, but many others having withstood the quake. About 700 soldiers have been sent to look for survivors, and 1,000 more will be deployed, a spokesman for the Qinghai emergencies office told Xinhua. The civil affairs ministry was to send 5,000 tents, 50,000 cotton coats and 50,000 quilts to the region, Xinhua reported. 'We have to mainly rely on our hands to clear away the debris as we have no large excavating machines,' said Shi Huajie, a paramilitary police officer working on the rescue operation. 'We have no medical equipment either.' The US Geological Survey put the quake at a magnitude of 6.9 while the China Earthquake Administration measured it at 7.1, saying the extensive damage included cracks in a dam. The USGS said the quake hit at 7:49 am (2349 GMT Tuesday) and was centred 380 kilometres (240 miles) south-southeast of the city of Golmud, at a depth of 46 kilometres. A series of aftershocks later rattled the area, with magnitudes of up to 5.8, the USGS reported. The quake was also felt strongly in neighbouring regions, including Tibet, Xinhua said. Further aftershocks were likely in the coming days, seismologists said. The remote high-altitude region is prone to earthquakes. Its economy is based heavily on farming and livestock herding by its overwhelmingly ethnic Tibetan population. A 6.2-magnitude quake rattled Golmud in August last year, triggering landslides and the collapse of about 30 homes. No casualties were reported. A massive 8.0-magnitude quake in May 2008 in neighbouring Sichuan province devastated a huge area of southwestern China, leaving at least 87,000 people dead or missing. Repeated calls by selfnews to local government headquarters, businesses and the local airport in Yushu county went unanswered. Chinese media reports said telecommunications with the airport had been lost, and that roads leading to the terminal had been damaged. Yushu county has a population of about 80,000 people, according to government figures. 'The houses here are almost all made of wood and earthen walls. Some collapsed when the quake happened,' Karsum Nyima, deputy director of the news department of Yushu TV, was quoted saying by Xinhua. 