Hundreds rescued after earthquake hits Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Rescuers in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan pulled out 221 people from a residential high-rise complex that collapsed when a shallow 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck before dawn Saturday, leaving others trapped inside.

Firefighters and soldiers scrambled with ladders, cranes, and other equipment to the two towers that folded like an accordion in a pile of rubble and twisted metal and extracted dazed survivors.

The emergency response center said that five 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 later declared dead.

The agency said 256 people were believed to be living in 92 households. A second 16-story high-rise also collapsed in the same way and fell on its side, and more than 30 survivors have been pulled out from there.

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.

Most people were asleep when the temblor struck about 4 a.m. local time. It was located 22 miles southeast of Yujing, and struck about six miles underground, according to the U.S. 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 being searched for possible damage.

Men in camouflage, apparently military personnel, marched into one area of collapse carrying large shovels.

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.

Residents in mainland China also reported that the tremor was felt there, and Chinese officials offered assistance.

Taiwan is home to some of the world's biggest companies that produce chips for the likes of Apple Inc. and Qualcomm Inc.

The island is prone to quakes as it sits on the edge of where the Philippine Sea Plate and Eurasia Plate converge.

Plate movements can trigger temblors that can cause disruption or damage to high-precision chip-making equipment.

There have been about 79 quakes greater than 4.5 in the area since the beginning of last year, according to a search on the U.S. Geological Survey website.

A magnitude-7.6 earthquake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people.

This article contains information from Bloomberg News.