The death toll rose to more than 7,600 Monday in the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province, disaster relief officials said.

Xinhua and the Shanghai Daily quoted relief officials as saying 7,651 people died in the quake that struck at 2:28 p.m., local time, and was felt as far away as Pakistan. Tremors were felt in other parts of China, as well Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok.

Local Chinese officials said 10,000 were injured.

This is a very dangerous earthquake, Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey, told CNN.

Officials said about 80 percent of the buildings collapsed in the Beichuan area. The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs reported up to 900 students may have been trapped when a high school collapsed.

Communication with China's Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Center has been cut off, State Forestry Administration officials said. About 130 giant pandas are living in the center and another 150 wild pandas roam the Wolong reserve.

Venues for the 2008 Summer Olympics weren't damaged, Xinhua reported.

Presgrave said the quake's damage potential was great because of its strength, nearness to population centers and shallow epicenter.

Six more earthquakes, measuring in magnitude between 4 and 6, occurred in nearby areas over the next several hours, USGS reported.

More than 10,000 people died in the area in 1933 when a quake struck that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale. The country's worst earthquake, on July 28, 1976, in Hebei province, killed more than 240,000.

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