BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A major earthquake shook central China Monday, killing at least five people and injuring more than 100, the country's official news agency Xinhua reported.
Students help a fainted classmate evacuate to a playground in Qionglai city, southwest China's Sichuan province.
The quake registered a magnitude of 7.8, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
At least four students were killed and 100 hurt when two primary school buildings collapsed in the Chongqing municipality, about 215 miles (345 kilometers) southeast of the epicenter, Xinhua reported.
Another person was killed when a water tower fell in the city of Mianyang, the news agency reported.
A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County, Xinhua reported.
The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work.
Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 60 miles from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.
"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.
The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.
"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake has the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said. In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.
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An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Tangshan is roughly 995 miles (1,600 km) from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.
After the quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 950 miles (1,528 km) from the epicenter.
They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.
"Our building began to sway," he said.
Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing highrises immediately after the earthquake.
At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT, 0228 ET), the USGS reported.
A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 400 miles east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.- Story Highlights
- NEW: Children die after 7.8 magnitude earthquake strikes central China
- NEW: Four killed and 100 hurt as two school buildings collapse in Chongqing
- Another person died when a water tower fell in the city of Mianyang
- Quake was relatively shallow, with potential for great damage, scientist says
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