Quake rattles rural China; no deaths

BEIJING -- A strong earthquake shook northeastern China early Saturday but local officials said there were no deaths or major damage.

The magnitude-7.2 quake struck Jilin province, which borders Russia and North Korea, at 1:19 a.m., according to the official Xinhua News Agency, which cited the Beijing Seismological Bureau.

The area is about 700 miles northeast of Beijing.

The quake was felt in the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang and Liaoning, parts of the northern Hebei province and Beijing, as well as the eastern Shandong province and the central Henan province, Xinhua said.

The quake was also felt in Yanji, a city on the North Korean border, said an official of the Jilin Earthquake Bureau. He would give only his surname, Liu.

Another official at the bureau, who only gave his surname Shao, said there were no reports of injuries or damage. It was centered so far underground that people living directly above weren't even aware it had occurred, he said.

"Because the earthquake happened late at night and so deep under the ground, no one felt it," Shao said.

The U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo., put the preliminary magnitude of the quake at 7.3. It said the quake was centered about 350 miles below the earth's surface.

Reports of the location of the quake's center varied slightly.

The USGS said it was near China's northeastern border with Russia, about about 65 miles west of the Russian city of Ussuriysk. The area is southwest of the major Russian port of Vladivostok.

A spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations in Vladivostok told The Associated Press that residents felt the quake, but that there were no immediate reports of damage or injury. He spoke on condition of anonymity.

Xinhua and local Chinese officials said the center was farther to the southwest in the sparely populated Wangqing county.