MEXICO CITY, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- A powerful earthquake measuring 8.2 on the Richter scale struck off Mexico's southern coast late Thursday, killing at least 30 people and triggering a tsunami alert.
Oaxaca state governor Alejandro Murat told broadcaster Televisa on Friday that 17 more people have been confirmed dead in his state, on top of the five deaths already announced in Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states.
Seven people were killed in the state of Chiapas and two in the state of Tabasco, Mexico's civil defense chief Luis Felipe Puente said earlier.
The epicenter of the quake is 96 km southwest of the town of Pijijiapan in Chiapas, at a depth of 33 km, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) said.
"It was a major earthquake in scale and magnitude, the strongest in the past 100 years," said President Enrique Pena Nieto in an address from the National Center for Disaster Prevention headquarters, where he was supervising the emergency response.
"I was eating my night snack when the quake occurred. I rushed out to the street in panic to find over one hundred people out there, many of whom were wearing pajamas. Electricity was cut off for about 20 minutes due to the earthquake. Many people drove their cars to open areas to sleep over the night," said Li Shizhan, boss of a restaurant in San Cristobal, Chiapas.
The shock was also felt in the capital of Mexico City, where many people ran out of buildings onto the streets.
People said the shock lasted for about dozens of seconds and the windows and beds in some buildings were shaking when the quake occurred.
Mexico City mayor Miguel Angel Mancera told local media that there were electrical outages but no reports of collapsed buildings or deaths.
Firefighters and police have been on inspection tours around the capital to check for any damage caused by the quake.
The southern Mexican state of Chiapas bordering Guatemala suffered severer damage than the capital according to pictures posted by Twitter users showing some houses collapsed or cracked.
A picture posted by "Periodico Coleccion" on Twitter shows the severely damaged roof of a shopping mall in Chiapas, with part of it falling on the ground.
Pena Nieto said the national emergency-response system has been activated and instructions have been issued to local governments to undertake monitoring and rescue operations.
The earthquake is the strongest in Mexico since 1985 when a magnitude-8.1 quake hit Mexico City that killed thousands of people and destroyed large parts of the capital.
