NANCHANG, Dec. 2 (Xinhuanet) -- Jiujiang City in east China's Jiangxi Province will build new apartments for some 6,000 households affected by last Saturday's earthquake, local authorities said Friday.

    The new apartments, at seven new resettlement sites, cover an area of 53.3 hectares, and the building will be able to sustain an earthquake with an intensity of 7, said Chen Zhen, vice president of the Jiangxi Provincial Planning and Designing Institute for Urban and Rural Construction.

    Two of the resettlement sites will be built in Ruichang City, which was the epicenter of the earthquake. The new buildings in Ruichang will accommodate 5,000 households. Five other sites in rural areas will be home to 1,000 households who will live in two or three-storied houses, Chen said.

    More than 400 building engineers have been sent to check-up condition of buildings in quake-hit areas. They have checked up 51,021 households in 49,071 buildings up to Wednesday.

    A large number of people in quake-hit areas were forced to live in tents after their houses were destroyed by the earthquake which measured 5.7 on the Richter scale last Saturday. The earthquake killed 13 people. Enditem