The count was an initial toll, given as emergency crews and hundreds of volunteers were digging through the debris of collapsed buildings looking for survivors and bodies.

Graco Ramirez, governor of Morelos state just south of Mexico City that was hardest hit, said on his Twitter feed that 42 had died in his region.

His counterpart in Mexico state, which lies just to the west of the capital, told Milenio Television that there were at least five deaths in his region.

The municipal chief of Puebla, a town southeast of Mexico City that was close to the epicenter of the quake, said he had counted two deaths.

Officials in Mexico City — home to 20 million people — have not given a toll. DM