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A 7.4-magnitude earthquake struck Wednesday off Taiwan, killing nine people, injuring hundreds and collapsing buildings in the island's most powerful tremor in at least 25 years.

The quake happened around 8 a.m. local time (8 p.m. Tuesday ET) at a depth of about 21 miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. It was about 11 miles south-southwest of Hualien City on the island's east coast.

At least nine people died and 882 people were injured, Taiwan's fire department said. Officials said the number of casualties could rise in the coming days.

The earthquake also prompted tsunami warnings that were later lifted in Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines.

Annie Lima, an American who has lived in Taiwan for almost 17 years and arrived in Hualien to visit friends on Tuesday, said she was still feeling aftershocks in the afternoon, hours after the initial quake.

"It was pretty scary," she told NBC News in an interview. "In all the years that I've lived here and in Southern California before that I've felt a lot of earthquakes, but this was by far the strongest and the most frightening."

When things started toppling, Lima said, she and her husband jumped to their feet and ran for the nearest doorway.

"Even there in a doorway on the second floor, we could barely keep our balance, you know, holding both sides of the doorway," she said. "And all around us things were falling off the walls and off shelves, smashing and crashing everywhere."

The damage was concentrated in the eastern Taiwan county of Hualien, near the quake's epicenter, where officials said they were working to free 131 people who were trapped.

Video on social media showed a building in Hualien that appeared to be nine stories tall partially collapsed and left standing at an angle. Another, appearing to have five floors, was similarly situated.

The toll from a massive earthquake that struck Taiwan last week rose to 16 on Wednesday after three more bodies were recovered on a hiking trail, officials said.

The magnitude 7.4 quake that hit the island on April 3 also left more than 1,100 people injured, with strict building codes and widespread disaster readiness credited with averting an even bigger catastrophe.

Authorities discovered the three victims Wednesday as they worked to retrieve two other bodies buried under the rocks along the Shakadang Trail in eastern Taiwan's Hualien county, the quake's epicenter.

The new fatalities brought the toll from the quake to 16, according to the National Fire Agency. Three people remain missing.