HONG KONG — The Chinese state news media reported Tuesday that at least 22 people had died in the collapse of four residential buildings in an eastern city the day before, a toll that would make it one of the deadliest cases of its kind in recent years.

The buildings, cramped six-story quarters for migrant workers in the city of Wenzhou, collapsed about 3:25 a.m. on Monday, the state-run Zhejiang Daily reported. Neighbors, flashlights in hand, began to sift through the rubble before rescue workers arrived, the paper said. Early reports indicated that several people had been killed, but the toll rose as rescue efforts continued Monday and overnight.

Chinese television showed scenes of dozens of rescue workers, some in orange coveralls and others in military fatigues, digging by hand through the rubble. By Tuesday morning, six people had been rescued, including a 3-year-old girl who was pulled from the wreckage on Monday evening, the state news media reported. Reports suggested that the girl’s father, who was killed, appeared to have shielded her from the building’s collapse.

Wenzhou, a bustling coastal city in Zhejiang Province, is a major manufacturing hub for goods like shoes and purses, and its factories attract thousands of migrant workers from across the country. The 3-year-old’s parents had worked in a shoe factory, and the girl spent most of the year with her grandparents thousands of miles away, her aunt told a local news website, Zhejiang Online.