Rescue personnel help a victim at a damaged building after an earthquake in Tainan, southern Taiwan
Taipei - A 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck while most people were caught asleep when temblor struck about 4am local time.
Published: Sat 6 Feb 2016, 6:10 AM
Last updated: Sat 6 Feb 2016, 6:17 PM
Update: The death toll has climbed to 11 in an earthquake that struck southern Taiwan.
Taiwan's Emergency Management Information center says that nine of the victims were found at a residential high-rise building that collapsed in the quake Saturday, and that the two others were killed by falling objects elsewhere in the city of Tainan.
Authorities say 475 people were injured, but 368 of them were discharged from hospitals by late Saturday afternoon.
Rescuers in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan pulled out 221 people and three dead from a residential high-rise complex that collapsed when a shallow 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck before dawn Saturday, leaving still others trapped inside.
Firefighters and soldiers scrambled with ladders, cranes and other equipment to the building that folded like an accordion in a pile of rubble and twisted metal and extracted dazed survivors.
The emergency response center told The Associated Press that three people were killed, including a 10-day-old infant, a 55-year-old woman and a 50-year-old man. Taiwan's official news agency said the infant and the man were pulled out of a 17-story Wei Guan residential building and that both were later declared dead. The agency said 256 people were believed to have been living in 92 households.
Dozens more people have been rescued or safely evacuated from a market and a seven-floor building that was badly damaged, the Central News Agency reported.
A bank building also careened, but no injuries were reported, it said.
Most people were caught asleep when temblor struck about 4 am local time (2000 GMT Friday). It was located some 22 miles (36 kilometres) southeast of Yujing, and struck about 6 miles (10 kilometres) underground, according to the US. Geological Survey.
As dawn broke, live Taiwanese TV showed survivors being brought gingerly from the high-rise, including an elderly woman in a neck brace and others wrapped in blankets. The trappings of daily life - a partially crushed air conditioner, pieces of a metal balcony, windows - lay twisted in rubble.
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. Newscasters said other areas of the city were still being canvassed for possible damage.
Men in camouflage, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels.
The Taiwanese news website ET Today reported that a mother and a daughter were among the survivors pulled from the Wei Guan building and that the girl drank her urine while waiting for rescue, which came sooner than expected.
The quake was felt as a lengthy, rolling shake in the capital, Taipei, on the other side of the island. But Taipei was quiet, with no sense of emergency or obvious damage just before dawn.
Residents in mainland China also reported that the tremor was felt there.
Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage.
Major earthquakes of the past 30 years
-- April 25, 2015: A 7.8 magnitude quake in Nepal kills almost 8,900 people and destroys about half a million homes. A massive aftershock with a magnitude of 7.3 follows in May, killing dozens more.
-- August 11, 2012: Twin earthquakes with a magnitude 6.3 and 6.4 leave 306 dead and more than 3,000 injured near the Iranian city of Tabriz.
-- March 11, 2011: Nearly 18,900 are killed when a tsunami triggered by a massive magnitude 9.0 undersea quake slams into the northeast coast of Japan, triggering a nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi atomic plant.
-- October 23, 2011: An earthquake of 7.2 magnitude rocks eastern Turkey, leaving more than 600 dead and at least 4,150 injured.
-- January 12, 2010: Magnitude 7.0 quake hits Haiti, leaving between 250,000 and 300,000 dead.
-- April 14, 2010: A 6.9-magnitude quake hits Yushu county in northwest China's Qinghai province leaving 3,000 people dead and missing.
-- May 12, 2008: A quake measuring 8.0 hits China's southwest province of Sichuan, leaving more than 87,000 people dead or missing.
-- May 27, 2006: A powerful quake in Indonesia's Yogyakarta region kills 6,000 and leaves 1.5 million homeless.
-- October 8, 2005: An earthquake of 7.6 kills more than 75,000 people, the vast majority of them in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province and the Pakistani-administered zone of Kashmir state. Some 3.5 million are displaced.
See full list here
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