At least 402 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured or trapped in collapsed buildings in the strongest earthquake to hit Taiwan in nearly a century, officials said today in Taipei.
In Taichung in central Taiwan, 193 people were killed and there were 148 dead in Nantou, where the epicenter was located, an official with the interior ministry's rescue centre said.
A total of 1,090 were trapped in toppled buildings and 2,074 were injured, he said.
The magnitude of the quake has been variously estimated at between 7.3 on the Richter scale according to Taiwanese officials and 8.1 by the French National Earthquake Surveillance Network.
The temblor hit around 1.47 a.m. (1747 GMT yesterday) with its epicentre 12.5 km west of the scenic Sun Moon Lake, in central Taiwan's Nantou county, the Seismology Centre said.
Tremors were felt as far away as in Hong Kong where some residents woke up to notice their building shaking.
An official of China's State Seismological Bureau said in Beijing that Xiamen and Wenzhou cities in southeastern China and Guangdong province in the south also felt the temblor. He said details of damage and casualties were awaited.
Witnesses in Taipei spoke of fresh aftershocks, power outages throughout the island, building collapses, objects falling off apartment blocks and people fleeing their homes.
State radio said more than six million households islandwide were hit by the power outage triggered by the collapse of a pylon in central Taiwan.
Records show an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale hit the southern county of Chiayi in 1906, killing 1,258 people and injuring 2,385 others and destroying some 12,000 houses.
Seismologists have warned southern Taiwan could be in for a potentially devastating quake following a relatively calm 30-year cycle.