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       A major earthquake rocked a mountainous area of northwestern China just before midnight on Monday, bringing buildings crashing down on people as they slept.

       At least 116 people were confirmed dead and 300 injured on Tuesday morning after the 6.2-magnitude quake, according to state media reports.

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       The death toll is expected to rise as a frantic rescue effort continued Tuesday in freezing temperatures in the remote Jishishan county, near the border between Gansu and Qinghai provinces.

       Chinese state media posted video of firefighters digging through debris in search of survivors, warning that the bitter cold and high-altitude terrain were making it difficult to find people.

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       Xi Jinping, China’s powerful leader, on Tuesday morning called for an all-out search-and-rescue effort and urged vigilance against “secondary disasters” from the changing weather or aftershocks.

       Basic infrastructure including water, electricity, and communication and transportation networks had also been damaged, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

       Gansu and Qinghai, on the eastern edge of the Tibetan plateau, are among the poorest and most ethnically diverse regions of China.

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       Nearly all of the Bonan, a mostly Muslim people and one of China’s least populous minority groups, live in Jishishan, which sits about 6,500 feet above sea level.

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       The average disposable income in the county is just more than $2,600 a year, or about half the national average.

       The scenes of devastation recall an even more deadly quake in 2008 in Sichuan province that killed nearly 90,000.

       Natural disasters often become flash points for public concerns about official failures. For many, they are a reminder that the country’s least well-off still live in harsh conditions and cheaply constructed housing.

       Near the epicenter of Monday’s quake, homes in Gansu villages that were made of bricks and wooden beams were almost entirely flattened, state media reported.

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       The quake coincides with a cold snap and record-low temperatures that had already shut highways across much of northern China.

       After fleeing dormitories, students from a middle school in Jishishan huddled together and burned their school books to guard against the 7 degree Fahrenheit night, according to videos on Chinese social media.

       Pei-Lin Wu and Vic Chiang in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report.

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