156 dead, thousands injured in China quake

Hundreds of people are dead or injured after a 6.6 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province. Source: AAP

A POWERFUL earthquake struck the steep hills of China's southwestern Sichuan province on Saturday, leaving at least 156 people dead and more than 5,500 injured, nearly five years after a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region.

Saturday's quake, while not as destructive as the one in 2008, toppled buildings, triggered landslides and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county.

The village of Longmen was hit particularly hard, with authorities saying nearly all the buildings there had been destroyed in a frightening minute-long shaking by the quake.

"It was such a big quake that everyone was scared," said a woman who answered the phone at a kindergarten hours later and declined to give her name. "We all fled for our lives."

Rescuers turned the square outside the Lushan County Hospital into a triage centre, where medical personnel bandaged bleeding victims, according to footage on China Central Television.

Rescuers dynamited boulders that had fallen across roads to reach Longmen and other damaged areas lying farther up the mountain valleys, state media reported.

CCTV reported that at least 156 people had died. The government of Ya'an city, which administers Lushan, said in a statement that more than 2,600 people were injured, but other reports suggested the real figure was probably more than double that.

The quake - measured by the China Earthquake Administration at magnitude-7.0 and by the US Geological Survey at 6.6 - struck the steep hills of Lushan county shortly after 8am (1000 AEST), when many people were at home, sleeping or having breakfast.

People in their underwear and wrapped in blankets ran into the streets of Ya'an and even the provincial capital of Chengdu, 115km east of Lushan, according to photos, video and accounts posted online.

The quake's shallow depth, less than 13km, likely magnified the impact.

Chengdu's airport shut down for about an hour before reopening, though many flights were cancelled or delayed, and its railway station halted dozens of scheduled train rides Saturday, state media said.

Lushan reported the most deaths, 76, but there was concern that casualties in neighbouring Baoxing county might have been under-reported because of inaccessibility after roads were blocked and power and phone services cut off.

As the region went into the first night after the quake, rain started to fall, slowing rescue work. Forecasts called for more rain in the next several days, and the China Meteorological Administration warned of possible landslides and other geological disasters.

Tens of thousands of people moved into tents or cars, unable to return home or too afraid to go back as aftershocks continued to jolt the region.

Lushan, where the quake struck, lies where the fertile Sichuan plain meets foothills that eventually rise to the Tibetan plateau and sits atop the Longmenshan fault.

It was along that fault line that a devastating magnitude-7.9 quake struck on May 12, 2008, leaving more than 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in one of the worst natural disasters to strike China in recent decades.

"It was just like May 12," Liu Xi, a writer in Ya'an city, who was jolted awake by Saturday's quake, said via a private message on his account on Sina Corporation's Twitter-like Weibo service. "All the home decorations fell at once, and the old house cracked."

The official Xinhua News Agency said the well-known Bifengxia panda preserve, which is near Lushan, was not affected by the quake. Dozens of pandas were moved to Bifengxia from another preserve, Wolong, after its habitat was wrecked by the 2008 quake.

As in most natural disasters, the government mobilised thousands of soldiers and others - 7,000 people by Saturday afternoon - sending excavators and other heavy machinery as well as tents, blankets and other emergency supplies.

Two soldiers died after the vehicle that they and more than a dozen others were in slipped off the road and rolled down a cliff, state media reported.

Premier Li Keqiang flew to Ya'an to direct rescue efforts, and he and President Xi Jinping ordered officials and rescuers to make saving people the top priority, Xinhua said.

The Chinese Red Cross said it had deployed relief teams with supplies of food, water, medicine and rescue equipment to the disaster areas.

With roads blocked for several hours after the quake, the military surveyed the disaster area by air.

Aerial photos released by the military and shown on state television showed individual houses in ruins in Lushan and outlying villages flattened into rubble.

The roofs of some taller buildings appeared to have slipped off, exposing the floors beneath them.

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Morsi to reshuffle Egypt cabinet: aide

EGYPT'S Islamist President Mohamed Morsi is set to announce a cabinet reshuffle, a presidential aide says, but it is unlikely to meet opposition demands for a complete overhaul of the government.

Morsi wrote on his Twitter account that he would make "a ministerial change" and replace provincial governors, adding the posts would go to "those who are most qualified".

A presidential palace official said Morsi's quote was taken from an interview that will be aired on Saturday night on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television channel.

A senior presidential aide said Morsi may announce the changes by the end of the week.

"There will be six to eight ministers, and wide-ranging changes among (provincial) governors," he said.

"The ministries that will be affected include some important ones," he added.

"I can't mention which ones because, as you know, this is a sensitive matter."

Morsi has repeatedly declared his confidence in Prime Minister Hisham Qandil, whose sacking is demanded by a coalition of opposition groups as a condition for dropping a boycott of parliamentary elections.

Egyptian newspapers have reported that Morsi may replace Justice Minister Ahmed Mekki and other less prominent ministers.

The opposition remains steadfast in its demand for a national unity government, in a protracted deadlock with Morsi that has delayed a much needed $US4.8 billion ($A4.68 billion) loan from the International Monetary Fund.

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Thousands rally at scandal-hit UK hospital

THOUSANDS of people have flooded a British town centre in a demonstration aimed at keeping major services at a scandal-hit hospital.

Campaigners of all ages packed into the Market Square in Stafford for the rally and public march, many holding placards and banners emblazoned with slogans showing their opposition to the withdrawal of services including maternity care from Stafford Hospital.

A public inquiry into the hospital, which was placed into administration five days ago, found it had provided "appalling" standards of care and caused unnecessary suffering to hundreds of patients over a five-year period up to 2009.

Health regulator Monitor has given two special administrators 45 working days to produce a plan for the sustainable "reorganisation" of future services.

The issue is of extreme importance to people living in and around the town and has now become apolitical, according to Sue Hawkins, chair of the Support Stafford Hospital group which arranged the demonstration.

Speaking in the busy Market Square, where supporters gathered ahead of the kilometre-long march to the hospital, Hawkins said it was important to move on from mistakes of the past.

"I think we've got to talk about 2013," she said.

"What happened, happened. The numbers will be debatable but what we've got to do is move forward and look to the future for our community.

"We've got a safe hospital today and we're looking to the future."

She said she hoped the march would send a clear message that the majority of people in Stafford want to retain acute services in the town and that they did not accept the proposal of a downgrade to a local hospital.

"We need to have an Intensive Care Unit here, we need to have an Accident and Emergency 24 hours a day and we believe that's possible.

"We know there have to be changes, we know there may have to be some alliance with another hospital to achieve that."

The march set off from the town centre at around 2pm in blazing sunshine and many taking part chanted slogans, waved their banners and sang songs as they walked.

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Special team to query US bombing suspect

ARMED guards are protecting the hospital where the wounded surviving Boston marathon bombing suspect is in serious condition and unable to be questioned to determine the motives behind the blasts.

US officials said a special interrogation team for high-value suspects was waiting to question 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whose older brother and alleged accomplice was killed on Friday morning in a wild shootout in suburban Boston.

Authorities planned to invoke a rare public safety exception to enable the team to interrogate Tsarnaev without first advising him of his right to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination and be provided a lawyer, a warning typically given to criminal suspects .

The FBI's website says the exception "permits law enforcement to engage in a limited and focused unwarned interrogation" of a suspect and introduce any statements gathered as evidence in a criminal prosecution.

The FBI says "police officers confronting situations that create a danger to themselves or others may ask questions designed to neutralise the threat without first providing a warning of rights".

The capture of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev lifted days of anxiety for Boston, but little was known about the motivation of the ethnic Chechen brothers.

President Barack Obama vowed investigators would solve that mystery.

"The families of those killed so senselessly deserve answers," said Obama, who branded the suspects "terrorists".

Obama said the capture closed "an important chapter in this tragedy," but he said there are many unanswered questions about the Boston bombings, including whether the two men had help from others.

"When a tragedy like this happens, with public safety at risk and the stakes so high, it's important that we do this right," he said.

"That's why we take care not to rush to judgment - not about the motivations of these individuals, certainly not about entire groups of people."

Late on Friday, less than an hour after authorities said the search for the 19-year-old college student had proved fruitless and lifted a daylong order that had kept Boston-area residents in their homes, a man emerged from his Watertown home and noticed blood on the pleasure boat parked in his backyard.

He lifted the tarp and found the wounded Tsarnaev, known the world over as Suspect No. 2.

Soon after that, the 24-hour drama that had shut down a metropolitan area of millions while legions of police went house to house looking for the remaining suspected Boston marathon bomber was over.

Boston police announced via Twitter that Tsarnaev was in custody. They later wrote: "CAPTURED. The hunt is over. The search is done. The terror is over. And justice has won. Suspect in custody."

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture touched off raucous celebrations in and around Boston, with chants of "USA, USA" as residents flooded the streets in relief and jubilation after four tense days since twin explosions ripped through the marathon's crowd at the finish line on Monday, killing three people and wounding more than 180.

Dzhokhar and his brother, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, were identified by authorities and relatives as ethnic Chechens from southern Russia who had been in the US for about a decade and were believed to be living in Cambridge, just outside Boston.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev died early in the day of gunshot wounds and a possible blast injury.

He was run over by his younger brother in a car as he lay wounded, according to investigators.

During a long night of violence on Thursday and into Friday, the brothers carjacked a man in a Mercedes-Benz in Cambridge, just across the Charles River from Boston, then released him unharmed at a petrol station, authorities said.

They also shot to death a Massachusetts Institute of Technology police officer, 26-year-old Sean Collier, while he was responding to a report of a disturbance, investigators said.

The search for the Mercedes led to a chase that ended in Watertown, where authorities said the suspects threw explosive devices from the car and exchanged gunfire with police.

A transit police officer, 33-year-old Richard Donohue, was shot and critically wounded, authorities said.

As his brother lay dying, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev abandoned his car and fled on foot, authorities said.

Watertown residents who had been told on Friday morning to stay inside behind locked doors poured out of their homes and lined the streets to cheer police vehicles as they rolled away from the scene.

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Vic Point Nepean master plan released

SOME things in life don't change, even over the course of more than 150 years.

From the mid 1850s, unwell first-class passengers arriving at Point Nepean in Victoria were given the best rooms with a view at the quarantine station so they could take in the glorious vistas of Port Phillip Bay.

Now the former station's first-class quarters in the national park are slated to be transformed into a boutique hotel or some other high-end accommodation.

It is just one of 57 largely unused buildings to be either reinvigorated or demolished under the Point Nepean master plan.

The Victorian government released the plan on Sunday, with expressions of interest from the private sector to open in coming months.

Last month, the government made public the rules for developments in national parks.

Stuart Hughes from Parks Victoria said adaptive reuse of existing buildings was the way forward.

"Our objective is to bring the place to life," he said.

Near the first-class quarters at the quarantine station stands the medical superintendent's house that was built in 1899. It was last used to house Kosovo refugees in 1999 and could soon be used as a day spa facility.

The quarantine station was established in 1852 and from 1952 the buildings also housed the Army Officer Cadet School.

The army officer cadet mess hall is expected to be transformed into a restaurant and function centre that can seat up to 300 people. It has already been used for several weddings.

It won't all be high-end offerings, with backpacker accommodation and a camping ground to be considered, along with an art gallery and a marine education facility.

There are also plans to establish a coffee shop near the visitor centre with the opportunity for visitors to learn about the multi-layered history of Point Nepean, including stories from the indigenous Boonwurrung people.

Peter Watkinson, from the Department of Sustainability and Environment, said at this stage there were no height or capacity restrictions for new buildings or renovations.

"You don't want to stifle innovation," he said.

Environment Minister Ryan Smith said the government was determined to strike the right balance between preserving the historical, natural and cultural values of the national park and supporting tourism and other opportunities.

"Appropriate and sensitive private investment is critical in ensuring the long-term survival of the site's historic and culturally significant buildings," he said.

Victorian National Parks Association executive director Matt Ruchel said he supported adaptive reuse of existing structures but the government should rule out new multi-storey buildings.

Visitors to the national park grew from 50,000 a year in 2009 to 180,000 in 2012.

Mr Hughes said the park could easily accommodate a more than doubling of annual visitor numbers.

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Bomb blast on bus kills nine in Pakistan

A BOMB blast on a bus in Peshawar has killed at least nine people, in the latest attack to hit Pakistan's troubled northwest ahead of historic polls next month.

The explosion occurred just hours after militants blew up the election offices of an independent candidate in the North Wazirstan tribal district fuelling concerns that violence will mar general elections on May 11.

"At least nine passengers have been killed and seven injured. Bomb disposal officials told me that it was a timed device," Fazal Wahid, a senior police official told AFP.

Another officer, Imran Shahid said police were investigating the possibility a suicide bomber was involved in the attack which occurred as the was bus passing through the city's Matani suburb.

There was no immediate claim for responsibility, but Peshawar is regularly targeted by the Pakistani Taliban who have waged an insurgency against the state since 2007.

An intelligence official in the city said the attack may be a reaction to a fresh military push in the Tirah valley of the Khyber tribal district, where the army has been fighting Taliban and Lashkar-e-Islam militants.

Military officials said heavy fighting between Pakistani troops and militants has killed 23 soldiers and 110 militants in Khyber this week.

Khyber straddles the NATO supply line into Afghanistan, used by US-led troops to evacuate military equipment ahead of their 2014 withdrawal.

Officials say securing Khyber is key to protecting security in Peshawar, ahead of elections which will mark the country's first democratic transition of power after a civilian government has served a full term in office.

Abdul Haq, a senior bomb disposal expert told AFP that four to five kilograms of highly explosive material was used.

The bomb destroyed three shops and a motorcycle, police and witnesses said.

"I was going to buy some milk when a huge blast took place. It was so powerful that it threw me back in my shop," Asad Khan, an 18-year-old shopkeeper in the market told AFP from his hospital bed.

Khan sustained injuries in his right shoulder and legs.

Anwar Ali, a passenger in the bus said the blast overturned the vehicle.

"I was sitting in the front seat when a powerful wave struck me and my head hit the front wind screen. I don't know what happened after that," Ali told AFP.

In an earlier incident, militants blew up the election office of Kamran Khan, a former legislator from North Waziristan who supported the outgoing government led by the Pakistan People's Party. No one was hurt.

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Newtown mum pleads for gun control

THE mother of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Newtown school shooting in the US has made a deeply personal plea from the White House for action to combat gun violence, choking back tears almost from the start of her speech.

Francine Wheeler, whose son, Ben, was killed in the December 14 attack inside Sandy Hook Elementary School, stepped in for President Barack Obama to deliver the president's weekly radio and internet address. She is the first person to deliver the address other than Obama or Vice President Joe Biden since the two took office in 2009.

"Thousands of other families across the United States are also drowning in our grief," Wheeler said in the address. "Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy."

Her husband, David Wheeler, sat silently next to her as she made the recording in the White House Library. Both wore the small green pins that have become a symbol of the schoolhouse shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six adults.

Obama asked Wheeler to deliver this week's address, which was taped Friday and released on Saturday. The White House said Wheeler and her husband wrote the remarks themselves.

"Sometimes, I close my eyes and all I can remember is that awful day waiting at the Sandy Hook Volunteer Firehouse for the boy who would never come home - the same firehouse that was home to Ben's Tiger Scout Den 6," Francine Wheeler said. "But other times, I feel Ben's presence filling me with courage for what I have to do, for him and all the others taken from us so violently and too soon."

Some of the Sandy Hook families, with Obama's blessing, have launched a stepped-up effort to push a gun control bill through Congress.

As the fate of the legislation appeared uncertain last week, Obama travelled to Hartford, Connecticut - about an hour's drive from Newtown - to make his case for the legislation. On the return trip to Washington, he brought back 12 of the victims' family members, who have been meeting with senators.

The Senate is considering a Democratic bill backed by Obama that would expand background checks, strengthen laws against illegal gun trafficking and slightly increase school security aid. The bill passed its first hurdle on Thursday.

Shortly after the vote, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the voices of the Newtown families may have been the decisive factor.

The bill before the Senate stops well short of Obama's call to ban assault rifles and the high capacity magazines that leave shooters able to fire large bursts of ammunition without having to reload.

It would subject almost all gun buyers to background checks, stiffen federal laws barring illicit firearms sales and provide slightly more money for school safety measures. Background checks are aimed at preventing criminals and mentally ill people from getting weapons, and gun control advocates consider broadening the system to be the most effective step available to lawmakers.

Opponents including the National Rifle Association, a gun rights lobbying group, say the measures would infringe on the constitutional right to bear arms and inconvenience law-abiding citizens while being easy for criminals to evade.

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Body found as Tibet mine disaster kills 83

Eighty-three workers have been buried after a large-scale landslide hit a mining area in Tibet. Source: AAP

RESCUE teams have found the first body almost 36 hours after a giant landslide in Tibet buried 83 mine workers.

Xinhua news agency said rescuers "found the first body at 5.35 pm (8.35pm AEDT)", after two million cubic metres of earth buried a copper mine workers' camp in Maizhokunggar county, east of the Tibetan capital Lhasa, at 6 am on Friday.

The report came after officials said at a press conference Saturday that no survivors or bodies had been found.

About 2,000 rescuers battled difficult terrain in the hunt for survivors after a vast three-kilometre-long section of land, with a volume of two million cubic metres, crashed down a slope, covering the miners' camp.

The rescuers braved bad weather as an emergency response team attempted to prevent a secondary disaster.

One rescue worker had earlier described the chance of survivors being found as "slim", Xinhua reported.

China's new president Xi Jinping and new premier Li Keqiang had ordered "top efforts" to rescue the victims, Xinhua said.

Mountainous regions of Tibet are prone to landslides, which can be exacerbated by heavy mining activity.

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Tanzanian building collapse toll hits 19

THE death toll from a building collapse in Tanzania's economic capital Dar es Salaam has risen to 19, officials say.

"Two more bodies were found this afternoon," regional commissioner Saidi Mecky Sadicky told AFP, updating an earlier toll of 17 in the disaster that happened on Friday.

Several dozen people are still missing around the site, which was littered with huge chunks of concrete.

"The operation is still going on but we have very little hope to find anyone alive," Sadicky said.

Eighteen people have been rescued alive from the remains of the 16-storey building, he said. However it is almost 24 hours since the last survivors were pulled out.

Hundreds of rescuers worked through the night in search of those still trapped in the rubble from the shell of the tower, which was being built near a mosque in the Kisutu area of Dar es Salaam.

Rescue work was slowed on Saturday afternoon after it started to rain.

Sadicky said between 60 and 70 people were reported to have been at or near the construction site on Friday morning, meaning that between 25 and 35 people could still be trapped.

Hundreds of people, including residents and army rescuers, clawed through piles of rubble in the hunt for survivors, alongside earthmovers and excavators.

"I thought there was an earthquake and then I heard screaming. The whole building fell on itself," witness Musa Mohamed told AFP on Friday shortly after the collapse

Sadicky said the rescue team was boosted on Friday night after the Chinese embassy told Chinese construction firms to provide additional earthmoving equipment.

Dozens of Chinese construction workers were at the site on Saturday instructing operators of excavators and forklifts that were sifting through the rubble.

Local residents turned out to supply rescuers with food, water and medication.

Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete visited the scene of the disaster in the coastal city and posted messages of condolence on his Twitter account.

"We pray for those who have been afflicted by this tragedy," he said. "We pray for togetherness in this time of need."

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Attacks leave more than 50 dead in Nigeria

ATTACKS on villages surrounding a central Nigerian city at the heart of unrest between Christians and Muslims have killed more than 50 people this week.

Officials say an assault on Wednesday on a village in the Riyom local government area killed 28 people and an attack in the Bokkos local government area killed 18 civilians. On Friday, a military spokesman said at least nine people were killed in the Barkin Ladi local government area.

The fighting often pits Christian villagers against nomadic Muslim cattle herders.

The attacks around Jos, a city in Nigeria's fertile central belt, come as a string of unsolved killings continue to plague a region that has seen thousands killed in massacres in recent years.

Authorities have pleaded for calm over the Easter weekend.

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