Mexico focuses on 10 buildings in search for quake survivors, 273 dead

Rescuers swarmed over rubble with shovels and picks on Thursday in a frantic search for survivors two days after Mexico’s deadliest earthquake in a generation, focusing on 10 collapsed buildings where people may still be alive, Reuters reported. The death toll in the powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake that rattled Mexico on Tuesday climbed to 250 as rescue workers backed by an army of volunteers on Thursday searched for survivors buried under mounds of rubble, officials said. More than 2,000 were injured and more than 50 people rescued in Mexico City alone, including two women and a man pulled alive from the wreckage of a building in the city's center Wednesday night. Then on Thursday afternoon, Navy Assistant Secretary Enrique Sarmiento announced that while there were blood traces and other signs suggesting someone could be alive beneath the school, all its children had been accounted for. According to a release from the national civil protection agency on Thursday, 137 people were killed in the capital, 73 in Morelos state, 43 in Puebla state, 13 in the State of Mexico, six in Guerrero state and one person in Oaxaca state, Xinhua news agency reported.
Rescuers are focusing on 10 collapsed buildings where people may still be alive. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera reports the death toll is now at least 273, with 50 people still missing.