REUTERS, Hualien

Taiwan’s biggest earthquake in at least 25 years killed nine people yesterday and injured more than 900.

Some buildings tilted at precarious angles in the mountainous, sparsely populated county of Hualien, near the epicentre of the 7.2 magnitude quake, which struck just offshore at about 8:00am and triggered massive landslides.

Linda Chen, 48, said her apartment in downtown Hualien city had been so badly damaged in an earlier earthquake in 2018 that they had to move house. But her new apartment block was damaged too in the latest earthquake.

“We worry the house could collapse anytime. We thought we had already experienced it once in Hualien and it would not hit us again, because God has to be fair,” she said.

The quake hit at a depth of 15.5 km (9.6 miles), just as people were headed for work and school, damaging dozens of buildings and setting off a tsunami warning for southern Japan and the Philippines that was later lifted.

Video showed rescuers using ladders to help trapped people out of windows. Strong tremors in Taipei forced the subway

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