The earthquake death toll in Christchurch, New Zealand, is over 100 and 228 people are missing, announced the New Zealand Civil Defence Minister, John Carter.
“For now, we have 102 deaths confirmed; the number of missing persons is 228, said the Minister for the media.
Earlier, a police official, Russell Gibson, said that the hope of finding survivors among the people trapped under rubble in Christchurch is quite low, given the fact that no sign of life has been noticed by rescue teams on Wednesday.
The earthquake of magnitude 6.3 on the Richter scale took place on Tuesday at 12:51 (Monday, 11:51 PM GMT), and was the most destructive New Zealand earthquake in the last 80 years. Its epicenter was 5 km from Christchurch, the second largest city of the country – 390,000 inhabitants, and only 4 km deep, which made it a lot more devastating.