Beijing — A powerful earthquake killed at least 53 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the region in western China and across the border with Nepal.
The official Xinhua news agency said another 62 people were injured, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.
About 1,500 firefighters and rescue workers were deployed to search for people in the rubble, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.
Xinhua via AP
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.1 magnitude and was relatively shallow, at a depth of about 6 miles. China recorded a magnitude of 6.8.
The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the border. The region is seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the height of some of the world’s highest peaks.
The average altitude in the area around the epicenter is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Seismic Network Center said in a social media post.
State broadcaster CCTV said there were a handful of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter, which was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Tibet’s capital Lhasa, and approximately 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the second region. the largest city in Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.
About 220 km away, in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, the earthquake woke residents and sent them out of their homes onto the streets. No information was immediately available in Nepal’s remote mountainous regions, closer to the epicenter.
There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 over the past century in the area hit by Tuesday’s quake, the USGS said.