A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck China on Monday morning causing buildings to shake in Beijing and more than 1,500 kilometers away, geologists said.

The quake hit 90 kilometers west-northwest of Chengdu at 2:28 p.m. local time, the U.S. Geological Survey said on its Web site. Chengdu is the provincial capital of Sichuan and has a population of about 11 million people.

The quake was centered 10 kilometers below the surface and was felt across much of China as far southwest as Bangkok, Thailand’s capital, some 3,300 km away. It lasted for more than 2 minutes.

According to China officials news agency Xinhua, four students died and more than 100 others were wounded when two primary school buildings collapsed in the Chongqing municipality, about 345 kilometers away southeast of the epicenter. Another person was killed when a water tower fell in the city of Mianyang, the same source said.

More fatalities are expected to be reported in Dujiangyan city, near the epicenter in the mainly rural Wenchuan County, where rows of houses are reported to have collapsed.

The USGS reported five more earthquakes, measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes in a two-hour interval after the first quake.

No damages were reported in Chengdu, the state television said, but workers were evacuated from swaying buildings in several cities. “We felt continuous shaking for about two or three minutes. All the people in our office are rushing downstairs. We're still feeling slight tremblings,” said an office worker quoted by Reuters.

Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work, he added.

About 225,000 people were killed when a magnitude 7.5 quake hit the northern Chinese city of Tangshan in 1976, the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second in recorded history, according to the USGS.