221 people pulled from rubble after quake in Taiwan

Around 400 troops have been mobilised to help the rescue effort.

President Ma Ying-jeou visited disaster areas in Tainan.

An entire residential complex of four buildings containing nearly 100 homes toppled, left on its side with twisted metal girders exposed and clouds of dust rising from the jumbled concrete. It was located some 22 miles (36 kilometers) southeast of Yujing, and struck about 6 miles (10 kilometers) underground, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Although the natural disaster was a shallow one, there has been no indication of a tsunami so far according to authorities. “I opened my metal door and saw the building opposite fall down”, said a 71-year-old neighbour who gave his name as Chang.

Elsewhere, a woman was killed by falling objects at a water tower, but no details are immediately available for the two new deaths.

Residents at the felled 16-storey Wei-kuan Building told of their terror as the quake hit, with survivors pulled bleeding and crying from the ruins, some just in their underwear.

The news website ET Today reported that a mother and a daughter were among the survivors from the Wei Guan building, and that the girl drank her urine while waiting for rescue, which came sooner than expected.

Rescuers went apartment to apartment, drawing red circles near windows of apartments they already had searched. “Some people were found in the shower, some in the bedroom”.

Several people, who had been trapped under a collapsed building in Yungkang district for more than 10 hours, were rescued Saturday afternoon, state-run Central News Agency reported.

Buildings in nine other locations in the city of 2 million people had collapsed and five were left tilting at alarming angles, a government emergency centre said.

News services say at least seven people, including a baby and a 40-year-old man, have been killed in an quake in Taiwan.

More than 1,230 rescuer workers, including 840 soldiers, have been deployed as part of the massive rescue operation.

As dawn broke, live Taiwanese TV showed survivors being brought gingerly from the high-rise buildings, including an elderly woman in a neck brace and others wrapped in blankets.

The Tainan city government says 115 have been hospitalized.

People with their arms around firefighters were being helped from the building, and cranes were being used to search darkened parts of the structure for survivors.

Men in camouflage, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels.

“If you can imagine something like this happening during Thanksgiving holiday weekend or Christmas travel, that’s the equivalent of what’s happening here in Taiwan right now”, she said.

“This was strong enough to not only be felt here in the [Taiwanese] capital city of Taipei but also in the southern provinces of China, Elise Hu, an NPR correspondent who was in Taipei when the quake hit, said in an interview with CNN”. But Taipei was quiet, with no sense of emergency or obvious damage just before dawn.

On Saturday night, Madonna performed before thousands of fans at Taipei Arena, offering her condolences to those affected by the quake, CNA reported.

The way that the building, which was erected in 1989, easily collapsed is raising questions about its structural integrity.

A major quake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed about 2 400 people and caused damage across the island, which lies in the seismically active “Pacific Ring of Fire”.

China has offered assistance to Taiwan following a 6.4-magnitude quake that killed at least three people and injured more than 150 in the south of the self-ruled island.