A minimum of 53 individuals have been confirmed useless and 62 are injured after a serious earthquake struck China’s mountainous Tibet area on Tuesday morning, Chinese language state media reported.
The earthquake that hit Tibet’s holy Shigatse metropolis round 09:00 native time (01:00 GMT) had a magnitude of seven.1 and a depth of 10 kilometres (six miles), in line with knowledge from the US Geological Survey, which additionally confirmed a sequence of aftershocks within the space.
Tremors have been additionally felt in neighbouring Nepal and components of India.
Earthquakes are frequent within the area, which lies on a serious geological fault line.
Shigatse is taken into account one of many holiest cities of Tibet. It’s the conventional seat of the Panchen Lama, a key determine of Tibetan Buddhism whose non secular authority is second solely to the Dalai Lama.
Chinese language state media reported the earthquake as having a barely lesser magnitude of 6.8, inflicting “apparent” tremors and resulting in the injury of over 1,000 homes.
Social media posts present collapsing buildings and there have been a number of sturdy aftershocks.
“After a serious earthquake, there may be at all times a gradual attenuation course of,” Jiang Haikun, a researcher on the China Earthquake Networks Heart, informed CCTV.
Whereas one other earthquake of round magnitude 5 should still happen, Jiang stated, “the chance of a bigger earthquake is low”.
The Chinese language air drive has launched rescue efforts and drones to the affected space, which sits on the foot of Mount Everest and the place temperatures are effectively beneath freezing.
Each energy and water within the area have been lower off.
Whereas tremors have been felt in Nepal, no injury or casualties have been reported, an area official in Nepal’s Namche area, close to Everest, informed AFP.
Tibet’s earthquake bureau informed the ORIONEWS on Tuesday that they have been unable to supply estimates on casualties as they have been nonetheless verifying the numbers.
The area, which lies close to a serious fault line of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, is residence to frequent seismic exercise. In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake close to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, killed practically 9,000 individuals and injured over 20,000.