At least 9 people have been killed and more than 700 injured by a powerful earthquake in Taiwan that damaged dozens of buildings and triggered tsunami warnings that reached Japan and the Philippines before being lifted, AFP reports.
Officials said the quake was the strongest to rock the island in decades and warned of more tremors in the coming days.
"The quake was close to land and shallow. It was felt throughout Taiwan and on the coastal islands," said Wu Chienfu, director of the Central Meteorological Administration's seismological center in Taipei.
Strict building regulations and widespread public awareness of disasters appear to have averted a major catastrophe for the quake-threatened island, which sits near the intersection of two tectonic plates.
Wu said the quake was the strongest since September 1999, when a 7.6 Richter magnitude earthquake claimed the lives of about 2,400 people and became the deadliest natural disaster in the island's history.
The 7.4-magnitude earthquake on Wednesday occurred shortly before 8:00 a.m. local time, with the United States Geological Survey (USGS) pinpointing the epicenter 18 km south of the Taiwanese city of Hualien, at a depth of 34.8 km.
Three people in a group of seven who were walking in the hills around the town early in the morning were fatally crushed by rocks swayed by the quake, officials said.
Separately, truck and car drivers were killed when their vehicles were hit by falling rocks, and another person died in a mine.
The National Fire Agency reported that all the deaths occurred in Hualien County and that 736 people have been injured so far in the earthquake.
Social media was flooded with video and photos from across the country showing buildings swaying in the quake.
"Everything was shaking violently, the paintings on the wall, my TV and the liquor cabinet fell," a man from Hualien tells SET TV.
Dramatic footage was shown on local television of multi-story buildings in Hualien and elsewhere tilting after the quake ended, and a warehouse in New Taipei City collapsing.
The city's mayor said more than 50 survivors were successfully pulled from the building's ruins.
Local television channels showed bulldozers clearing rocks along the main road to Hualien, a coastal city of about 100,000 people located in the mountains and cut off from the world by landslides.
The main roads leading to the city pass through an extensive series of tunnels - some of them miles long - and officials say many people and vehicles could be trapped.
"We need to carefully check how many people are trapped and quickly rescue them," President-elect and current Vice President Lai Ching-te told reporters in Hualien.
President Tsai Ing-wen urged local and central government agencies to coordinate with each other and said the military would also provide support.
Authorities in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines initially issued tsunami warnings, but around 10 a.m. the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the threat had "largely passed."
In Taiwan's capital, the subway briefly stopped running but resumed within an hour, and residents received warnings from local district chiefs to check for gas leaks.
Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes as the island lies near the intersection of two tectonic plates, while nearby Japan experiences about 1,500 quakes each year.
Across the Taiwan Strait, social media users in the eastern Chinese province of Fujian, which borders Guangdong to the south, and elsewhere said they also felt strong tremors.
Hong Kong residents also reported feeling the quake.
China, which claims self-ruled Taiwan is a renegade province, is "paying close attention" to the quake and "is ready to provide disaster relief," the state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Production at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company - the world's largest chipmaker - was briefly disrupted at some factories, a company official said, and work at construction sites for new plants was halted for the day.
Most of the earthquakes in the area have been weak, although the damage they do varies depending on the depth of the epicenter below the earth's surface and its location. /BGNES
