'Devastating': Massive Quake Collapses Buildings and Kills Hundreds in Mexico

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'Devastating': Massive Quake Collapses Buildings and Kills Hundreds in Mexico

The quake hit a little over a week after an 8.2 magnitude tremor slammed Mexico, triggering tsunami warnings and killing hundreds

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"Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces, and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city's normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down," CBS News reported.

"Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces, and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city's normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down," CBS News reported. (Photo: NBC Nightly News/Twitter)

Updated:

Officials in Mexico put the official deathtoll at 217 on Wednesday, though that number is almost certain to rise, as rescuers continued to pull people from the rubble of collapsed buildings caused by Tuesday's massive earthquake.

As Reuters reports:

Desperate rescue workers scrabbled through rubble in a floodlit search on Wednesday for dozens of children feared buried under a Mexico City school, one of hundreds of buildings wrecked by the country’s most lethal earthquake in a generation.

The magnitude 7.1 shock killed at least 217 people, nearly half of them in the capital, 32 years to the day after a devastating 1985 quake and less than two weeks after a powerful tremor killed nearly 100 people in the south of the country.

Among the twisted concrete and steel ruin of the Enrique Rebsamen school, soldiers and firefighters found at least 22 dead children and two adults, while another 30 children and 12 adults were missing, President Enrique Pena Nieto said.

Earlier:

On the anniversary of the horrific 1985 earthquake that killed at least 5,000 people, Mexico City on Tuesday was rocked by yet another powerful quake that destroyed buildings and forced thousands to pour into the streets for safety.

The U.S. Geological Survey placed the quake's preliminary magnitude at 7.1. More than 200 people have reportedly been killed, and rescuers are still searching the rubble for survivors. 

CBS News reported from Mexico City:

In the Roma neighborhood, which was struck hard by the 1985 quake, piles of stucco and brick fallen from building facades littered the streets. Two men calmed a woman seated on a stool in the street, blood trickling from a small wound on her knee.

Pictures fell from office building walls, objects were shaken off of flat surfaces, and computer monitors toppled over. Some people dove for cover under desks. Local media broadcast video of whitecap waves churning the city's normally placid canals of Xochimilco as boats bobbed up and down.

The earthquake struck a little over a week after an 8.2 magnitude quake killed more than 90 people in Mexico and triggered tsunami warnings.

"Devastating" images and videos of the damage wrought by Tuesday's quake immediately began circulating on social media.

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