The earthquake struck the mountainous plateau that separates Qinghai province from Tibet, one of China's poorest regions.
A series of aftershocks collapsed houses, schools and offices in the ethnic Tibetan county of Yushu, leaving survivors without shelter in freezing conditions. The Qinghai plateau sits around 9,800 feet above sea level, on average.
The situation of several villages higher up in the mountains is still unknown, and roads and communications have been cut.
The foothills to the south and east of the affected area are home to mostly nomadic herdsmen, while the area to the north and west is desolate and sparsely populated.
In Jyeku, the county capital, around 300 people had been killed, according to Huang Limin, the deputy secretary-general of the local government. The People's Liberation Army has been dispatched to help the rescue efforts.
"I see injured people everywhere. The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers,"
Zhuohuaxia, a local government spokesman, told the Xinhua state news agency.
He said more than 85 per cent of houses had collapsed. "There is a big crack in the Yushu Hotel, the four-storey meeting hall of the prefecture government has collapsed," the official said.
At least part of a vocational school had also collapsed and "a lot of students are buried underneath," he added
The quake was centred 150 miles north of Qamdo in Tibet and 235 miles south of the mining town of Golmud in Qinghai, and had a depth of 6.2 miles according to the United States Geological Service.
A 6.2 magnitude quake rattled Golmud in August last year, triggering landslides and the collapse of about 30 homes, but there were no reports of casualties.
A magnitude 8 quake in May 2008 in neighbouring Sichuan province devastated a huge area of South Western China, leaving at least 87,000 people dead or missing.
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7588401/China-earthquake-kills-hundreds.html
