50 Injured in 6.1 Quake in China, Its Second in Two Days

China’s second earthquake in two days rocked the south coast Saturday, injuring about 50 people, some of them schoolchildren hurt in a stampede, officials said.

The earthquake, with a preliminary magnitude of 6.1, was centered in the Gulf of Tonkin in the South China Sea and struck at 10:57 a.m., officials said.

A number of people were injured in a tremor measuring 5.7 that hit southwestern Sichuan province before dawn Friday, causing houses to collapse and opening up cracks in others, officials said.

They refused to say how many people were hurt but said there were no deaths.

An estimated 50 people were hurt Saturday in southern Guangxi province, an official of the Seismological Bureau in the port city of Beihai said by telephone.

No one was killed, according to initial reports, she said.

Most of the injured were in the port of Qinzhou, where at least 19 schoolchildren were hurt in a stampede as they rushed out of their classrooms, the official said.

She said 30 others had been injured in various places across the province, including one person who jumped out of a second-floor window.

Several farmhouses collapsed, but there were no reports of damage to larger buildings, she said. Reports were still awaited from the island of Weizhou Dao in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The earthquake in Sichuan caused wider damage when it struck the southern flank of China’s most populous province at 2:58 a.m. Friday, an official of the Seismological Bureau in Leshan said by telephone Friday.

The earthquake, which was felt in Leshan city and the provincial capital, Chengdu, affected nine villages in the mountainous and remote region, the official said.

“Some houses were destroyed, some walls were split or cracked and some chimneys collapsed,” he said Friday.