One person was killed, 13 were injured and more than 2,000 were relocated after an earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale struck southwest China's Sichuan Province early Sunday, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

The national seismological network said the quake jolted the juncture between Sichuan's Suining City and Tongnan County of Chongqing Municipality at 5:36 AM.

Its epicenter located at 30.3 degrees north latitude and 105.7 degrees east longitude, with a depth of about 10 kilometers.

As of 12:00 PM Sunday, one person, whose name was not given, had been killed and 12 others injured in Suining, the civil affairs ministry said in a statement posted on its website.

The earthquake also damaged a small local dam, and toppled or wrecked 210 houses in the city.

More than 30 local seismologists and officials have arrived in the quake-hit area to carry out further investigation.

Suining, a city of 3.8 million, is 140 kilometers east of Chengdu, capital of Sichuan Province.

Meanwhile, Tongnan County neighboring Suining also reported one person injured during the earthquake.

Direct economic loss caused by the earthquake amounted to 30 million yuan (about US$4.4 million) in its eight townships. The quake also caused damages to more than 4,700 houses in the county.

Chongqing's civil affairs authority has sent 40 tents and 1,500 cotton-padded quilts to the disaster area.

Seismologists saw a slim possibility of more strong quakes in the area, where only three minor quakes measuring 2.0 on the Richter scale were recorded in the past 20 years, according to the provincial earthquake bureau.

Currently the experts were still not sure if the quake on Sunday was an aftershock of the 8.0-magnitude quake in Sichuan on May 12, 2008, which left about 87,000 people dead or missing.

The possibility of aftershocks could not be ruled out, said Chen Tieliu, director of Chongqing's earthquake bureau.

(Xinhua News Agency February 1, 2010)