Dead and hundreds injured after quake Taiwan

- Rescuers continue to pull survivors under the rubble in the Taiwanese city of Tainan. A powerful earthquake occurred Saturday as a building collapse. At least five people, including a baby of ten days, died. Three hundred people ended up injured in hospital. The fear is the death toll will rise further.

The fire department reported that have been rescued so far 123 people. The earthquake in the south of the Asian country occurred relatively close to the surface for at a depth of about 10 kilometers. Tainan live nearly 2 million inhabitants. The city is only tens of kilometers from the epicenter. Emergency services marched en masse and the city council formed a disaster team quickly. More buildings in Tainan suffered a setback, but as far as known to regret not killing other places.

Not only professionals swung into action. Even civilians who were nearby, helped. Climbed as a plumber away on his ladder to open with tool windows. He managed to free a woman.,, She asked me to go back and save her husband and child, but I was afraid of a gas explosion, so I dared not go in, '' he said.

Taiwan falls within the so-called Ring of Fire. That is a huge horseshoe-shaped area around the Pacific where many underground seismic activity, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions as a result. Asian island state is frequently hit by severe earthquakes. In 1999 some 2400 people were killed by an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.3.