BEIJING- Some towns near the epicentre of China's huge earthquake have been 'razed to the ground' with no houses left standing, a People's Armed Police official was quoted by state media saying Wednesday.

"The losses have been severe. Some towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed to the ground," Wang Yi, head of an armed police unit sent into the disaster zone, was quoted as saying by Sichuan Online news site.

Wang said "some" of the eight towns in Wenchuan county at the epicentre of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake had suffered the heavy damage.

He did not specify exactly how many towns had been flattened by the quake that struck on Monday but was quoted as saying they "include" the towns Yingxiu, Xuankou, and Wolong.

"Mountain villages in the surrounding area have also been basically razed to the ground," he added.

He said there had been at least 337 deaths in the area but that relief teams were still calculating the toll.

Earlier state media reports in Wednesday said at least 7,700 people had died in Yingxiu alone.

Only 2,300 people in Yingxiu town survived Monday's quake, local government official He Biao was quoted by Xinhua news agency saying.

The town has a population of about around 10,000, according to state media.

More than 1,000 of the survivors in Yingxiu were seriously injured, the report said.

Officially more than 12,000 people have been killed in the quake, but this toll is expected to rise dramatically once the full devastation from
hard-to-reach areas such as Yingxiu is confirmed. - AFP/vm