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Earthquake schools 'may have been rushed'

05/09/2008

China has publicly admitted for the first time that poorly-constructed school buildings may have contributed to the death-toll following this year's devastating earthquake.

More than 87,000 people died after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake centred on Wenchuan in Sichuan on May 12th.

Thousands of the victims were children and students trapped by rubble when their school and university buildings collapsed.

This week a senior Chinese earthquake official admitted there were "quality problems" with many schools built during a construction drive in the last several years.

"It is possible there were problems with those buildings, because there has been a rush of construction of schools recently," Ma Zongjin told state news agency Xinhua.

Mr Ma, from the national Wenchuan earthquake expert committee, said 2,000 investigators were examining the effects of the quake to better prepare China for future disasters.