BEIJING: A magnitude 7 earthquake hit China’s Tibet region on Thursday evening, killing at least 16 people, injuring 32 and collapsing hundreds of homes in the northern regional city of Nagqu, official media said.
Search and rescue efforts continued following the collapse of at least 339 homes, the Nagqu media office said, citing city government officials. Among the injured, 11 people were in serious condition and the other 21 sustained minor injuries, the media office said.
Rescue teams from police and fire departments were building tents to house people displaced by the quake.
It was the biggest earthquake in the region in the last five years, China’s national broadcaster CCTV said.
The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 10:33 p.m. local time, with its epicenter 191 kilometers (119 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu, in a sparsely populated, high-altitude area of northern Tibet. It put the earthquake’s depth at 18 kilometers (11 miles).
China’s official Xinhua News Agency cited the China Earthquake Networks Center as putting the depth at 10 kilometers (6.2 miles).
Nagqu is more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Tibet’s capital, Lhasa.