A TOTAL of 21 people have been killed in a 6.8-magnitude earthquake that jolted Luding County in Southwest China’s Sichuan Province yesterday, local authorities said.

President Xi Jinping has ordered all-out rescue efforts to minimize casualties, stressing that saving lives should be taken as the primary task.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the instruction after the quake hit Luding at 12:52 p.m. yesterday.

Seven people were killed in Luding County, the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and the other 14 were killed in Shimian County, Ya’an City.

The epicenter was monitored at 29.59 degrees north latitude and 102.08 degrees east longitude, at a depth of 16 km, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center.

Damage to the roads, telecommunications and houses is being checked, said the government information office of the Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture.

The prefecture has dispatched over 600 rescue workers and 300 have arrived at the epicenter area to join the rescue efforts, repairing roads and sending drones to assess quake damage.

The province has activated the second-highest level of emergency response for the earthquake and more rescue forces are rushing to the epicenter area.

There are several villages within the 5-km range around the epicenter area, which is 39 km from the county seat of Luding.

The tremor was felt in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan, which is 226 km away from the epicenter. (Xinhua)