Rescue personnel work at the scene of Enrique Rebsamen School, which collapsed when an earthquake struck on Tuesday. Workers have been able to communicate with a girl who’s alive — but trapped in the rubble.

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Rescue personnel work at the scene of Enrique Rebsamen School, which collapsed when an earthquake struck on Tuesday. Workers have been able to communicate with a girl who’s alive — but trapped in the rubble.

Marco Ugarte/AP

A strong earthquake that hit Mexico City and other central areas has killed at least 245 people, officials say. Search teams are working feverishly to find any survivors who were trapped — including at least one girl who’s among students caught when the quake turned their school to rubble.

The girl, 12, has been able to communicate with emergency crews, and she has wriggled her fingers for them through the wreckage. She was located alive in the debris of the Enrique Rebsamen School, south of the capital. The building collapsed during Tuesday’s 7.1-magnitude quake.

After visiting the site, NPR’s Carrie Khan reports:

“It is a heartbreaking scene. Hundreds of volunteers and rescue personnel have flooded to this neighborhood around the school … all are emotionally drained, tired, but just holding on to hope they can reach some of the children alive … under all that rubble.

“One wing of the school, three stories just pancaked in the powerful quake. One right on top of the other, making the rescue effort and chances of survival very difficult.

“But the volunteers keep coming …with hard hats and fluorescent vests. They’re removing the rubble with picks, shovels, their hands…whatever they can. And dozens more are taking in donations, feeding the rescuers, just wanting to be there and do something for those children either dead or trapped in the building.”

Rescue workers have spent hours trying to free the girl and anyone else who might have survived. In addition to heavy rubble that sits precariously in the debris pile, the effort has been frustrated by heavy rain that fell overnight.

The girl’s name is Frida Sofia, a doctor who’s working with the rescue team tells the Associated Press. The doctor added that the girl says there are several other children near her who are also alive.

The name Frida Sofia became a top-trending term on Twitter — but there are questions over whether it’s the girl’s name. Media outlets in Mexico have reported it, especially after journalist Joaquín López-Dóriga tweeted it. But teachers say there’s no student at the school with that name — and El Universal reports that a rescuer used the name as a way to communicate with the girl.

All the same, El Universal’s main headline on Thursday reads, “The hope of Rebsamen is called ‘Frida.'”

Authorities say they’ve pulled dozens of survivors from damaged buildings. But Mexico City’s Mayor Miguel Ángel Mancera says more than 35 buildings collapsed, from offices and apartments to schools.

Mexico City’s metro service says it’s allowing people with rescue tools — picks, shovels and mallets — to ride on its vehicles. And for the second day, the service is free.

“President Enrique Pena Nieto has declared three days of mourning for victims of the quake,” Carrie reports. “Schools in the capital and surrounding affected states remain closed until Monday.”

Rescuers, firefighters, policemen, soldiers and volunteers look for survivors in a flattened building in Mexico City on Thursday, as part of a widespread search for people who lived through a strong earthquake.

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Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images

Rescuers, firefighters, policemen, soldiers and volunteers look for survivors in a flattened building in Mexico City on Thursday, as part of a widespread search for people who lived through a strong earthquake.

Alfredo Estrella/AFP/Getty Images

In Mexico City and outlying areas — including the city of Jojutla, in Morelos state, where many houses and buildings were reduced to rubble — soldiers, police, firefighters and volunteers have alternated between working to find survivors and undergoing pauses of total silence, as rescuers call out for anyone who’s still alive to respond.

“While many eyes are on the earthquake effects in Mexico City, this town of 20,000 people was crumbling,” James Fredrick reports from Jojutla for NPR. “Its old abode buildings were no match for the 7.1 quake.”

Jojutla Mayor Alfonso de Jesus Sotelo “says 2,000 buildings are damaged, 300 of those totally collapsed; 16 people have died, including four children,” Fredrick says.

“Definitely this loss is unsustainable,” Sotelo says. “We are out of control, being able to correct or absorb the cost that’s involved.”

If initial reports and relief efforts seemed to focus on Mexico City, Fredrick reports, “A day later that has changed: Hundreds of young volunteer rescue workers line up to clean rubble. Donated bottles of water and canned food pile up all over the town.”

In Puebla, where the epicenter of the quake was located in the western part of the state, Gov. Antonio Gali gave a grim account of the losses on Thursday morning.

“We have 43 dead and 117 injured,” Gali told FORO TV. He added, “We have 9,772 affected homes and 1,632 total losses.”

Nations sign a treaty banning nuclear weapons.

Leaders and diplomats from dozens of countries signed a treaty at the United Nations on Wednesday that will outlaw nuclear weapons — a document that disarmament advocates described as a historic first.

The world’s nine nuclear-armed countries, including the United States and North Korea, declined to sign the treaty, and the Americans and their allies denounced it as dangerously naïve.

The treaty, finalized in July by negotiators representing 120 of the 193 United Nations members, offered a stark contrast to the threats of mutual nuclear annihilation raised in the bombastic exchanges between North Korea’s regime and the Trump administration in recent weeks.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, as it is officially known, will enter into legal force 90 days after being ratified by 50 countries.

“The treaty is an important step toward the universally held goal of a world free of nuclear weapons,” Secretary General António Guterres, who supported the negotiations, said at the ceremony held in the Trusteeship Council chamber.

President Michel Temer of Brazil was the first to formally sign the treaty, as other leaders and diplomats in the chamber applauded.

The United States and the other nuclear-armed states urged other countries not to sign it. The Americans in particular ridiculed it, arguing that North Korea and any other rogue entity with nuclear weapons would ignore its provisions.

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In a statement issued before the signing ceremony, NATO denounced the treaty, saying it “disregards the realities of the increasingly challenging security environment.”

Supporters of the treaty said they had no expectation that nuclear-armed states would accept it at first. But they said they hoped that its widespread acceptance elsewhere would eventually increase the stigma of possessing such weapons because of their destructive power.

“This treaty is a clear indication that the majority of the world no longer accepts nuclear weapons and do not consider them legitimate weapons, creating the foundation of a new norm,” the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons said in a statement.

The treaty would outlaw the use, threat of use, testing, development, production, possession, transfer and stationing in a different country of nuclear weapons.

— RICK GLADSTONE

Trump says he has ‘decided’ on the Iran nuclear deal.

President Trump said on Wednesday that he had made a decision on the nuclear agreement that his predecessor negotiated with Iran, but declined to tell reporters what it was.

“I have decided,” he said, repeating the phrase three times. Pressed by reporters, he added, “I’ll let you know what the decision is.”

His comments, made as he met with President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, came the day after he told the United Nations General Assembly that the deal was “an embarrassment for the United States.”

Under United States law, Mr. Trump has until Oct. 15 to certify whether Iran is complying with the agreement, which required it to dismantle much of its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Mr. Trump has already certified Iran’s compliance twice, and most analysts said there was no cause to determine otherwise.

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— PETER BAKER

Iran’s leader calls nuclear deal a ‘model.’

Speaking to the General Assembly on Wednesday, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran praised the nuclear deal with his country as a “model.”

He argued that the Middle East was safer because of it, and said threats by the Trump administration “undermines international confidence in negotiating with it.”

“Imagine for a moment how the Middle East would have looked had the J.C.P.O.A. not been concluded.” Mr. Rouhani said, using an acronym for the pact. He also singled out “baseless” allegations made on Tuesday at the General Assembly, without naming anyone.

The nuclear deal, Mr. Rouhani said, has been widely applauded and endorsed by the Security Council. “As such it belongs to the international community in its entirety and not only to one or two countries,” he said, adding that the agreement “can be a new model for global interactions.”

Pledging that Iran would not be the first to “violate” the nuclear deal, Mr. Rouhani took sharp aim at President Trump, saying, “It will be a great pity if this agreement were to be destroyed by rogue newcomers to the world of politics.”

A tweet sent from Mr. Rouhani’s official account also took aim at Trump’s speech.

He also said that American taxpayers should ask why billions of dollars spent in the region had not advanced peace but has only brought “war, misery, poverty” and a “rise of extremism to the region.”

— SOMINI SENGUPTA

Trump meets individually with other leaders.

President Trump is devoting his third day of international diplomacy in New York to a series of individual meetings with foreign leaders on Wednesday, mainly from the Arab world, as he seeks to rally a coalition in the Middle East against Iran.

He started on Wednesday morning by getting together with King Abdullah II of Jordan, who has met with Mr. Trump several times already, including an encounter shortly after the inauguration when the king attended a Washington prayer breakfast to lobby the president not to move the United States embassy to Jerusalem.

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The two expressed friendship on Wednesday. Mr. Trump praised the king for hosting so many Syrian refugees in his country and for combating terrorism. “He’s a very fine gentleman, a very nice man,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the start of the meeting. “He’s also a great, great fighter.”

The king expressed solidarity. “We’re all fighting together,” he said, adding that terrorism “is a scourge” around the world. “Jordan will always stand beside you and your country.”

Mr. Trump will meet later in the day with Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain and President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt. He also will host a luncheon with African leaders.

– PETER BAKER

Did Trump breach the U.N. Charter?

President Trump’s threat to destroy North Korea provoked a debate among scholars of international law about whether he had violated a tenet of the United Nations Charter.

Article 2(4) of the Charter says that countries should “refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force” against another country, and grants exceptions only for instances sanctioned by the Security Council or acts of self-defense.

In this case, there was no authorization from the Security Council, so the question is: Was Mr. Trump justified on the basis of self-defense?

John B. Bellinger III, who served as a legal adviser in the administration of George W. Bush, said that despite his “colorful” choice of words, Mr. Trump was on solid ground, invoking the self-defense argument.

“His threat to destroy North Korea did not violate the U.N. Charter because he said that the United States would use force only ‘if the United States is forced to defend itself or its allies,’ ” Mr. Bellinger said by email. “The Charter specifically allows a U.N. member to use force in self-defense.”

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Kevin Jon Heller, a law professor at the University of London, said he believed that Mr. Trump had overstepped.

“The problem is that self-defense must always be proportionate to the armed attack, and Trump clearly threatened disproportionate force,” Mr. Heller argued. “Had he said a nuclear attack would require wiping North Korea off the face of the earth, that might have been a lawful threat. But he did not qualify the threat in any way; on the contrary, he suggested North Korea would have to be destroyed in response to any armed attack on the U.S. or its allies. That is an unlawful threat that violates Art. 2(4).”

— SOMINI SENGUPTA

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NAYPYITAW (Reuters) – Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi condemned on Tuesday human rights violations in Rakhine state and said violators would be brought to book, but she did not address U.N. accusations of a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the military.

The Nobel Peace laureate’s remarks came in her first address to the nation since attacks by Rohingya Muslim insurgents on Aug. 25 sparked a military response that has forced 421,000 Rohingya Muslims into neighboring Bangladesh.

Western diplomats and aid officials, hoping for an unequivocal condemnation of violence and hate speech, welcomed the tone of Suu Kyi’s message, but some doubted if she had done enough to deflect global criticism.

Human rights group Amnesty International described her speech as “little more than a mix of untruths and victim-blaming”, saying she and her government were “burying their heads in the sand” for ignoring the army’s role in the violence.

“We condemn all human rights violations and unlawful violence. We are committed to the restoration of peace and stability and rule of law throughout the state,” Suu Kyi said in her address in the capital, Naypyitaw.

“Action will be taken against all people, regardless of their religion, race and political position, who go against the law of the land and violate human rights,” she said.

Long feted in the West as a champion of democracy in the Buddhist-majority country during years of military rule and house arrest, Suu Kyi has faced growing criticism for saying little about abuses faced by the Rohingya.

The United States urged Myanmar on Monday to end military operations, grant humanitarian access, and commit to aiding the safe return of civilians to their homes.

Myanmar’s generals remain in full charge of security and Suu Kyi did not comment on the military or its operation, except to say there had been “no armed clashes and there have been no clearance operations” since Sept. 5.

Rohingya refugees arriving in Bangladesh have told of soldiers and Buddhist civilians attacking and burning villages as recently as last Friday. It was not possible to verify their accounts.

BURNING VILLAGES

Related Coverage

• U.N. starting to gather testimony on Myanmar violations: investigator
• Factbox: Reactions to speech by Myanmar’s Suu Kyi on violence in Rakhine State

Rights monitors and fleeing Rohingya say the army and Rakhine Buddhist vigilantes have mounted a campaign of arson aimed at driving out the Muslim population. The U.N. rights agency said it was “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing”.

Myanmar rejects that, saying its forces are tackling insurgents of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), which has claimed responsibility for attacks since October. The government has declared it a terrorist group and accused it of setting the fires and attacking civilians.

Western governments that backed Suu Kyi’s campaign against military rule still see her as the best hope for Myanmar’s political and economic transition.

But she has to avoid angering the powerful army.

She also has to avoid alienating her supporters by being seen to take the side of a Muslim minority that enjoys little sympathy in a country that has seen a surge of Buddhist nationalism.

Some diplomats said she had not squarely addressed the problem of violence in her speech.

But her domestic audience was happy.

Thousands of supporters cheered and let balloons float into the sky in the main city of Yangon as they watched her speech on a big screen. Social media saw a blizzard of posts with the message: “We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi”.

The military spokesman was not available for comment. One official familiar with the military’s thinking said it would have no objection to her speech.

Phil Robertson of Human Rights Watch said satellite images showed about half of all Rohingya villages had been torched and it was time that Suu Kyi, the government and military faced the fact that the security forces “shoot and kill who they want” and burn villages.

Amnesty International said there was “overwhelming evidence” the security forces were engaged in ethnic cleansing.

“While it was positive to hear Aung San Suu Kyi condemn human rights violations in Rakhine state, she is still silent about the role of the security forces,” the group said.

‘READY TO EXPLODE’

In Geneva, the head of a U.N. investigation into the violence said his team had heard testimony that suggested Myanmar’s security forces may be committing rights violations.

“What they have come up with reflects in general the reporting of the international media,” Marzuki Darusman said, referring to a small team of investigators talking to refugees in Bangladesh.

Myanmar has declined to issue visas to Darusman’s team but he said was more hopeful, following Suu Kyi’s speech in which she spoke of allowing diplomats access to Rakhine state.

Suu Kyi, 72, said her government had been promoting harmony between the Muslim and largely Buddhist ethnic Rakhine communities. But a government official there did not share her optimism.

“They have no trust for each other,” the state’s secretary, Tin Maung Swe, told Reuters, adding tension was high.

“The situation is ready to explode.”

Suu Kyi said she was committed to recommendations made by an advisory team led by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan, which last month suggested a review of a law that links citizenship and ethnicity and leaves most Rohingya stateless.

On the return of refugees, Suu Kyi said Myanmar was ready to start a verification process and “refugees from this country will be accepted without any problem”.

The U.N. children’s agency said a quarter of a million children were among the refugees.

Additional reporting by Wa Lone and Andrew Marshall in SITTWE, Shoon Naing, Yimou Lee in YANGON, Tom Miles in GENEVA; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Michael Perry and Clarence Fernandez