Rescuers and volunteers are frantically digging through rubble of collapsed schools and homes looking for survivors of Mexico’s deadly 7.1 magnitude earthquake that hit Mexico City last Tuesday night Kabul time.  

Already the death toll is reported to be over 240.

The earthquake hit on the 32nd anniversary of Mexico’s deadliest earthquake that killed an estimated 9,500 people. Wednesday’s quake hit just two later than the earthquake of 1985. 

As buildings started to shake, thousands of Mexico City residents fled into the streets in panic, and many stayed to help rescue those trapped.

Rescue workers however have been frantically searching for children and teachers at a school in the capital where one wing of the three-story building collapsed. 

According to AP the education department reported that at least 25 bodies had been recovered from the school. They said 21 of these were children. 
During a visit to the site, President Enrique Pena Nieto said 30 children and eight adults were reported missing at that point.

AP reported that a mix of neighborhood volunteers, police and firefighters used trained dogs and their bare hands to search through the school's rubble and were listening for sounds of life from under the rubble.

Pena Nieto urged people to be calm and said authorities were moving to provide help as 40 percent of Mexico City and 60 percent of nearby Morelos state were without power. But, he said: "The priority at this moment is to keep rescuing people who are still trapped and to give medical attention to the injured people."

He also said “his country is facing a national emergency”. 

"It was chaos, I arrived just after the quake, my kids go to school in the next street, and when I saw the school, I panicked, and I ran and I ran for my children and well, I spent all afternoon here watching how they rescue people," said Diana Limon, a Mexican resident.  

People across central Mexico already had rallied to help their neighbors as dozens of buildings tumbled into mounds of rubble. Mexico City Mayor Miguel Angel Mancera said buildings fell at 44 sites in the capital alone as high-rises across the city swayed and twisted and hundreds of thousands of panicked people ran into the streets blocking traffic.

Buildings also collapsed in Morelos state, including the town hall and local church in Jojutla near the quake's epicenter. A dozen people died in Jojutla.

The town's Instituto Morelos secondary school partly collapsed, but school director Adelina Anzures said the earthquake drill held in the morning came in handy.

"I told them that it was not a game, that we should be prepared," Anzures said of the drill. When the quake came, children and teachers rapidly filed out and nobody was hurt, she said.

The US Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.1 quake hit at 1:14 pm (11.44pm Kabul time Tuesday) and was centered near the Puebla state town of Raboso, about 123 kilometers southeast of Mexico City.