The death toll from Sunday's 7.2 Baja earthquake felt across the Southwest increased to three stood at two Monday, with at least 233 people, mostly in the Mexican border town of Mexicali, reporting injuries, according to reports.

The San Diego Union-Tribune inexplicably retreated from its report of a third death reported a third death in Baja Monday as a result of the shaker that hit at 3:40 p.m. and was felt in Los Angeles, Tucson, Pheonix and elsewhere. One man reportedly died when his home collapsed. The New York Times reported that a squatter also died when home he had taken refuge in a home that later caught fire a second victim ran into the street as the quake hit and hit by a car. There were few details about the third death. [Late update: Mexican President Felipe Calderon indicated there was in fact a third possible victim, a person who had died following a quake-induced heart attack, according a transcript of a speech he made in Mexicali Monday].

Baja California Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan told Spanish-language network Televisa that some of the 233 injured people were being treated in tents outside hospitals in the Mexicali area.

The quake struck about 40 miles south of Mexicali and nearby Calexico, which lies on the United States side of the border. In the latter city, a state of emergency was declared and downtown, with shattered glass lining the streets, was shut down.

It was the largest quake to hit the region since the 7.3 Landers quake in the desert in 1992, and Sunday's temblor was bigger than the January shaker in Haiti that likely killed more than 200,000 people.

However, experts have noted that Sunday's quake was centered in a relatively unpopulated desert, and that the buildings in the industrial city of Mexicali nearly 40 miles to the north were built to better standards than those in Haiti.

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