China officials say quake toll near 10,000

BEIJING, May 12 (UPI) -- Chinese disaster officials say the death toll from Monday's devastating earthquake in southwestern China has spiked to near 10,000.

Meanwhile, seismological experts in Sichuan province said more than 1,180 tremors up to 6.0 magnitude had been recorded as of 5 a.m. Tuesday, Xinhua reported.

In nearby Beichuan County, 80 percent of the buildings were reported destroyed and an estimated 3,000 were reported dead there alone.

In addition to the death toll, state-run media reported 10,000 more people were injured in Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan provinces, CNN reported

Xinhua reported at least 2,300 were trapped in the collapse of two chemical plants. About 80 tons of ammonia leaked out and 6,000 people were evacuated, CNN said.

Reports said 50 bodies were pulled from the rubble of a high school in Wenchuan County, where 900 students were feared buried.

"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," the state-run Chinese news agency reported.

Xinhua said Premier Wen Jiabao was on hand to direct the rescue efforts.

Tremors were felt in other parts of China, as well Hanoi, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan.

"This is a very dangerous earthquake," Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told CNN.

Communication with China's Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center has been cut off, State Forestry Administration officials said. About 130 giant pandas are living in the center and another 150 wild pandas roam the Wolong reserve.

Venues for the 2008 Summer Olympics weren't damaged, Xinhua reported.

A quake that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale killed more than 10,000 people in the same area in 1933. The country's worst earthquake, on July 28, 1976, in Hebei province, killed more than 240,000.