By RIA Novosti,
Beijing : The death toll from the May 12 earthquake in southwest China’s Sichuan province has reached 67,183, a spokesman for the Chinese State Council said on Tuesday.
According to official data, over 361,000 people have been injured, and 20,000 are listed as missing. Most of the missing are now presumed dead. Over 15 million people have been evacuated from the area.
Chinese authorities expect the final death toll to exceed 80,000. Another 700,000 people face the threat of flooding caused by the quake, which has created new lakes in the region. Sixty-nine dams in the Sichuan province are on the brink of collapse.
The quake, measuring 8.0 on the Richter scale according to the China Seismological Bureau, was the worst to hit the country in more than three decades, and affected eight provinces, with Sichuan suffering the bulk of the devastation. Around 80% of buildings have been destroyed in some areas.
Thousands of aftershocks have been reported in Sichuan since May 12, most recently a 5.4-magnitude aftershock that hit the Sichuan Province on Tuesday.
A 6.4-magnitude aftershock in northeast of Qingchuan County, where the earthquake’s epicenter was, left 8 dead and over 900 injured on May 25.