• Roads, bridges destroyed or damaged
• Quake areas mostly rural
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BEIJING (CNN) -- At least one person was killed, about 1,300 others were injured and thousands more made homeless by two powerful earthquakes in southwestern China, the Central Seismology Bureau reported Friday.

Of those injured in Thursday's quakes, 210 were in serious condition, provincial officials said. Three disaster-relief teams were sent to the scene.

A magnitude-5.0 quake struck the Ninglang Yi Autonomous County in Yunnan province and neighboring Yanyuan County in Sichuan province at 7:31 p.m. (1131 GMT) Thursday, followed by a stronger 6.2 quake seven minutes later.

"The quakes damaged 13,786 homes in Huaping county, of which 3,796 collapsed," one official said by telephone.

In Ninglang County, more than 1 million square meters (11 million square feet) of housing were damaged and 1,800 homes collapsed, another official said Some 23,600 county residents were made homeless.

Roads, bridges destroyed or damaged

Most of the injuries occurred in Ninglang, where 13 bridges and tunnels collapsed and more than 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) of roads were damaged. Neighboring counties also were affected.

"Total losses in Ninglang have been estimated at 480 million yuan ($58 million)," said one official. But infrastructure damage was greater in Huaping County, where 168 km (104 miles) of roads were damaged or destroyed.

Earthquakes registering 5.3 and 5.2 hit Ninglang last month.

Quake areas mostly rural

The affected area was mostly rural and already suffering from extreme poverty. Some 80 percent of residents in Ninglang county receive state food aid, state media said.

The stricken area is also home to the Mosuo ethnic minority, one of the world's few remaining matriarchal societies.

In 1997 a devastating quake measuring 7.0 struck nearby Lijiang city, killing more than 300 people, injuring more than 16,000 and destroying 340,000 homes.

Chinese seismologists have warned that China is passing through a phase of high earthquake activity, and reports of medium to powerful quakes are common, although most take place in remote and sparsely populated areas.

China suffered the worst earthquake in modern history in 1976, when a tremor measuring 7.8 leveled the northern city of Tangshan, killing at least 240,000 people.

Reuters contributed to this report.