Officials have set up an outdoors hospital in Ya-an, the city closest to the epicentre.
Ya'an has a population of 1.5 million and is home to a giant panda breeding center.
In Ya'an, residents sat in groups outside convenience stores watching the news on television sets early Sunday.
Massive relief operations for the earthquake in Sichuan's Ya'an City have been warmly praised by media in the mainland.
One soldier was killed and seven others injured in a traffic accident on their way to Ya'an, Xinhua reported.
Chen Yong, the vice-director of the Ya'an city government earthquake response office, said the death toll may not rise much more.
The BBC's John Sudworth in Ya'an says dozens of injured people are still being treated in a triage centre outside the main hospital.
The pandas housed in Ya'an include 40 that were moved there after the 2008 quake damaged the main panda research base in Wolong.
The greatest damage occurred in the countryside outside Ya'an, with older houses in one village completely collapsing, Xinhua quoted Jin Zelin, an official with the provincial armed police, as saying.
Kujira-ya serves an especially tasty one, Suigei ("drunken whale").
China Youth Daily says the country must learn from Japan's earthquake-resistant building designs after almost all the buildings in Baoxing county in Ya'an, including newer earthquake-proof houses, were badly damaged in the quake.
The quake caused houses to collapse along a street in Ya'an and sent rocks tumbling into vehicles, Xinhua said, adding that patients were being treated on the ground in front of the Lushan County Hospital.
The earthquake Saturday morning triggered landslides that cut off roads and disrupted phone and power connections in mountainous Lushan county, in Sichuan's Ya'an city area, which is further south on the same fault line where a devastating quake wreaked widespread damage across the region five years ago.
Ya know, to spend an hour of your life in line and mingle with people.
One student's sign included the words: "End of an era, " ''See ya" and "Peace out.
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