At least seven people were killed and 20 others injured on Friday when a series of earthquakes - the largest of them measuring 5.7 on the Richter Scale - jolted southwest China's Yunnan and Guizhou provinces.
The 5.7 magnitude quake hit the border area of Yiliang county in Yunnan as well as Weining in the neighbouring Guizhou province at 11:19 am local time. The depth of its epicentre was stated to be about 14 km, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
A report from the Chinese city of Kunming said many people felt the tremor and rushed out of the buildings as the quake jolted the nearby Yunnan province.
Just an hour later, another quake measuring 5.6 on the Richter Scale hit Yiliang county again, said a statement from the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC).
Many people rushed out of buildings in Shaotong city, which administers Yiliang, when the quake struck the area, bloggers said on the popular microblogging website weibo.com.
Luo Shaojiang, a resident of Shaotong, said that she felt dizzy, and the water bucket and desks were shaking in her third-floor office when the quake struck.
The tremor was also felt in the neighbouring province of Sichuan. A woman surnamed Wang said that she saw tables shaking in her home in Sichuan city of Leshan. Yunnan's provincial seismological bureau has sent a work team to the quake-hit area, said an official with the bureau.
The official media said that seven people were killed and 20 others injured the quakes.
According to CENC, another minor quake measuring 4.4 jolted southwest Yiliang county of Yunnan at 1:12 pm local time, the fourth tremor that occurred in a day in this region. Its epicentre also had a depth of about 14 km, it said.
Earlier three earthquakes this morning had the magnitude of 5.7, 5.6 and 3.2 respectively, the centre said.