Beijing — A powerful earthquake in Tibet killed at least 53 people and trapped many more on Tuesday as dozens of aftershocks shook the region in western China and across the border in Nepal.
The official Xinhua news agency said another 62 people were injured, citing the regional disaster management headquarters.
About 1,500 people were involved in searching for people under the rubble. firefighters-rescuers, the Ministry of Emergency Situations reported.
Xinhua via AP
The US Geological Survey said the 7.1 magnitude earthquake was relatively shallow at a depth of about 6 miles. China recorded a magnitude of 6.8.
The epicenter was about 50 miles northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the border. The area is seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide and causes uplift in the Himalayas, strong enough to change the height of some of the world's highest peaks.
The average elevation in the area around the epicenter is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Earthquake Network Center said in a social media post.
State broadcaster CCTV said there were several populated areas within a 5-kilometer (3-mile) radius of the epicenter, which was located 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the second in the region. . the largest city is Shigatse, known as Shigaze in Chinese.
About 140 miles away in Nepal's capital, Kathmandu, the quake woke residents and sent them running out of their homes into the street. There was no information from the remote mountainous areas of Nepal closer to the epicenter.
In the past century, the area where Tuesday's quake struck has had 10 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or more, according to the USGS.