U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in China for talks on Iraq and North Korea, offered his condolences to the victims' families

BEIJING, February 24 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – At least 258 people were killed and more than 1,000 injured Monday, February 24, when an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale ripped through a remote area in northwest China, flattening hundreds of buildings, including schools.

The mid-morning earthquake, the worst in the region in five decades, hit the predominantly Muslim area around Jiashi city in the western part of Xinjiang region at 10.03 am (0203 GMT)

An official at the Xinjiang Seismological Bureau said that "some schools" collapsed and caused casualties, but was not able to provide a figure for the number of children killed, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Beijing Seismological Bureau official Li Qianghua confirmed the high death toll, blaming the poor quality of structures in the quake-plagued area.

Official state news agency Xinhua said more than 1,000 buildings had collapsed in one village in Bachu County.

The villages and small towns hit had poor communications so a final toll would not be known for some time.

More than 1,000 houses and schools had collapsed in one village in Bachu County, and that some 1,000 people were injured, the official news agency reported.

The tremor hit 40 kilometers (24 miles) east of Jiashi city, in a county of the same name, near the Xinjiang border with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, local officials said.

Other areas that felt strong tremors included Artux County, Markit County and Kashi city.

Officials from the seismological bureau in nearby Kashgar said they had dispatched a team of experts to find out what had happened.

"It's in an area which is quite populated," said official Zhang Lixin.

"We have sent experts to investigate."

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in China for talks on Iraq and North Korea, offered his condolences to the victims' families.

"I was sorry to learn, just in the last few minutes, of the earthquake in western China and the loss of life," he said before a meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin.

"I want to express my regrets to the Chinese people."

Jiang, clearly uninformed, said: "I was told the earthquake was not very serious."

Twenty-four people were reported killed in March 1996 when a quake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hit an area about 120 kilometers (75 miles) north of Jiashi.

On January 21, 1997, an earthquake measuring 6.4 on the Richter scale struck closer to Jiashi, killing at least 12.

In April of the same year, a 6.6-degree earthquake occurred, killing another nine.

None came close to matching China's worst ever earthquake which killed 242,000 people and injured 164,000 on July 28, 1976.

The deadly quake wiped the city of Tangshan in northeast China off the map in just seconds.