Earthquake hits Taiwan - measures 6.4 in richter

A powerful earthquake jolted southern Taiwan on Thursday, injuring 64 people, toppling farm houses and derailing a carriage on a high-speed train.

Panicked residents fled shaking buildings in the 6.4-magnitude quake, which also momentarily cut off electricity to more than half a million homes.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor struck about 70 kms from the island's second-largest city Kaohsiung, but it was felt as far north as the capital Taipei, several hundred kilometres away.

"We are monitoring the aftermath for any potential damage," President Ma Ying-jeou told reporters during a hastily arranged trip to Tainan, a city north of the epicentre.

Out of the 64 officially counted as injured by 6:00 pm, 33 were in Tainan county, the national fire agency said.

The quake struck in a sparsely inhabited mountainous area in Jiahsian township in Kaohsiung county, an area still recovering from a massive typhoon that triggered floods and mudslides in August, killing about 700 people.

"It felt like the buildings were going to collapse," said Chen Pei-chi, a teacher in Shiaolin Elementary School in a village close to the epicentre.

It was the biggest earthquake to hit the Kaohsiung area in recent years, the weather bureau reported, and followed massive killer quakes in Chile on Saturday and Haiti in January. The bureau said the initial quake at 8:18 am (0548 IST) was followed by 19 aftershocks. The strongest, with a magnitude of 5.7, hit eight hours later.