OTTAWA - Windows rattled, walls swayed and knick-knacks toppled from store shelves near the national capital Friday as Canadians across a wide swath of Ontario and Quebec felt the disconcerting tremors of a 5.2-magnitude earthquake. In the tiny town of Shawville, Que., about 18 kilometres from where Earthquakes Canada located the temblor's epicentre, residents described thinking at first there had been an accident or an explosion.

China's southwestern Sichuan province stopped Saturday to mourn the victims of a deadly earthquake that struck exactly a week ago, state media reported. The public mourning began with the sound of sirens at 8:02 am (0002 GMT), the moment the tremor struck, followed by three minutes of silent remembrance, the official Xinhua news agency reported. CCTV state television showed footage of mourners bowing in remembrance at one ceremony held in front of a black and white banner printed with words of condolence.

Thousands of rescue workers combed through quake-shattered villages in southwest China on Sunday in a race to find survivors as the death toll from a powerful tremor the day before rose to 179. Dressed in bright orange uniforms, rescuers battled their way up mountain paths strewn with wreckage to reach isolated parts of Sichuan province on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, state broadcaster CCTV showed. Army troops dressed in camouflage worked through the night, searching villages where houses had been destroyed for survivors and treating those injured in the quake.

The area of southwestern China struck by a violent tremor on Saturday has witnessed some of the world's deadliest earthquakes. The area sits on the boundary between two of the Earth's tectonic plates, the Indian and Asian plates, which are constantly grinding against each other. The region is unusual geologically because of the steep slopes at the boundary between the Sichuan Basin and the Tibetan plateau, according to seismologists. The elevation rises by about 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) over only about 50 kilometres (about 30 miles).