Dozens of people were killed and hundreds of buildings were toppled after a 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck a region near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, close to the Himalayan border with Nepal on Tuesday. Tremors were felt in Nepal.
The quake struck shortly after 9 a.m. at a depth of 6.2 miles in Dingri County in Tibet, Chinese state media reported. The state-run news agency Xinhua said at least 93 people had died and that rescue teams were deployed to locate more victims. Xinhua published video of police removing rubble and lifting debris.
China’s state broadcaster reported that more than 1,000 houses had collapsed in Dingri County.
Several aftershocks were felt in the area, including in Nepal. The quake had a magnitude of 7.1, according to the United States Geological Survey, though it was measured as 6.8 by the China Earthquake Networks Center.
The nearest city to the earthquake’s epicenter was Shigatse, the second-largest city in Tibet, with a population of 640,000. Shigatse is regarded as a holy site as the seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most senior figures in Tibetan Buddhism.
A tourist not far from Shigatse who spoke to The Times said she was in her hotel room when the earthquake started shaking her building. She said the electricity went out and that she and a friend squatted between the beds. When the shaking stopped, they ran out of the building.
The tourist, who only gave her surname, Xu, shared a video showing several single-story brick buildings with collapsed walls.
The Himalayan region is prone to powerful earthquakes. In 2015, a quake in Nepal with a magnitude of 7.8 killed nearly 9,000 people. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, residents streamed out of their homes in the morning as the earthquake rattled buildings.
“Based on the magnitude of the earthquake, there could be some damages in mountains of eastern Nepal,” said Lok Bijaya Adhikari, a senior seismologist at Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center.
Most residents from Nepal’s high mountain regions such as Everest, Makalu, Rolwaling and Kanchenjunga have migrated to lowland areas to avoid the extreme cold of winter.
“Although most people migrate to lower land during winter season, some are still there,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former chief of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. “There’s always risk of avalanche and glacial lake outburst floods after earthquakes.”
Berry Wang contributed reporting.
