Chinese disaster officials rapidly increased the death toll from Monday's devastating earthquake in southwestern China, pushing it above 8,500.

The 7.9-magnitude temblor was centered in Wenchuan County in remote Sichuan province, which has a population of 112,000. In nearby Beichuan County, 80 percent of the buildings were reported destroyed and an estimated 3,000 were reported dead there alone.

State-run media put the overall death toll at 8,533 with 10,000 more injured in Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan provinces, CNN reported

Xinhua reported hundreds were buried in the collapse of two chemical plants. Some 80 tons of ammonia leaked out and 6,000 people were evacuated, CNN said.

Reports said 50 bodies were pulled from the rubble of a high school in Wenchuan County, where 900 students were feared buried.

Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help, Xinhua reported.

Xinhua said Premier Wen Jiabao was on hand to direct the rescue efforts.

Tremors were felt in other parts of China, as well Hanoi, Vietnam, Thailand and Pakistan.

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

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.

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

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