A man in Gansu Province killed himself yesterday after jumping out of an apartment window to avoid being trapped indoors during an earthquake that later proved to be a false alarm.

The man, who was drinking with four friends at his home in the provincial capital of Lanzhou City around 4am yesterday, jumped out his fourth-floor window when someone outside shouted "earthquake, run," the local Lanzhou Morning Post reported today.

The friends, who were a bit drunk at the time, all dashed out of the apartment. When they stopped for a rest, they found their friend was missing, the report said.

After finding out the quake alarm was false, they returned to the apartment and found their friend in a pool of blood in front of the building, the report said.

Police pledged to carry out an investigation to find the person who gave the false alarm, the report said.

An 8.0-magnitude earthquake hit Wenchuan in southwest China's Sichuan Province on May 12, killing at least 65,080 people as of noon yesterday.

The temblor, the country's deadliest disaster in three decades, left 364 people dead in Gansu while 7,560 others were injured in the province.

(Shanghai Daily May 27, 2008)