A deadly 6.8-magnitude earthquake has killed at least 21 people in China's Sichuan province on Monday.
The shaking from the terrifying quake, which hit at 12.52pm, has damaged houses and triggered landslides, blocking some roads and disrupting power and phone lines, CCTV has shown.
The epicentre of the earthquake lay near a tourist hotspot in Luding county, about 161 miles from the provincial capital of Chengdu, the China Earthquake Administration said.
Around a million residents in surrounding areas also experienced tremors in the aftermath of the quake.
Laura Luo, who lives in Chengdu, was on her way home when she saw people rushing out of their high-rise homes in panic after getting earthquake warnings on their phones.
"There were many people who were so terrified they started crying," the international PR consultant told Reuters.
Chengdu residents are currently under lockdown following a Coronavirus outbreak that has restricted most of its 21 million residents to their homes.
The earthquake is another blow to residents who have also been dealing with a heat wave and drought that led to water shortages and power cuts.
In Luding, the quake was so powerful some people could not stay stood up while cracks started to spread across the front of some houses, the China News Service reported.
Video clips on social media showed lights swinging while people rushed out of buildings into the streets.
Four of the seven people killed were in Luding.
The quake was Sichuan's biggest since August 2017, when one of magnitude 7.0 hit the Aba prefecture.
But because the area sits on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau where tectonic plates meet, it is regularly hit by earthquakes, just some more severe than others.
Two quakes in June killed at least four people.
The most powerful Sichuan earthquake on record was in May 2008, when a magnitude 8.0 quake killed almost 70,000 people and caused extensive damage.
Samantha Yang, 23, said this was the scariest earthquake since the 2008 Wenchuan one.
