At least 53 dead after strong earthquake
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the earthquake in Tibet.
The quake struck near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC) has said, killing at least 53 people and collapsing “many buildings” with tremors also felt in neighbouring Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and parts of India.
The quake struck Dingri county with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal on Tuesday morning, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC). The US Geological Survey reported the tremor as magnitude 7.1.
“Fifty-three people have been confirmed dead, and 62 others injured as of Tuesday noon, after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted Dingri County in the city of Xigaze in Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region at 9:05 am Tuesday,” the official Xinhua news agency said.
Videos published by China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed destroyed houses with walls torn apart and rubble strewn across the ruins in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Temperatures in Dingri are around minus 8 degrees Celsius and will drop to minus 18 this evening, according to the China Meteorological Administration, AFP reported.
The high-altitude county in the Tibet region is home to about 62,000 people and situated on the Chinese side of Mount Everest.
While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday’s quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometre radius in the last five years, the CENC added.
Stay with us as we cover the developments.
Key events
Here are some more pictures being sent to us over the newswires from Tibet:
Over 1,000 houses damaged by earthquake as tremor strikes Tibet
There are three townships and 27 villages within 20 km (12 miles) of the epicentre of the earthquake, which had its epicentre high up in the remote Tibetan plateau close to the Himalayan border with Nepal, about 50 miles north of Mount Everest.
These affected areas had a total population of about 6,900, Chinese state media reported. More than 1,000 houses have reportedly been damaged.
As we have been reporting, the 7.1 magnitude earthquake’s epicentre is located in Tingri, a rural Chinese county known as the northern gateway to the Everest region.
Temperatures in the county are around -8C (17.6F) and are estimated by forecasters to drop to -18 this evening. The Chinese air force has launched rescue efforts and drones to the affected area amid the below-freezing conditions.
Tuesday’s epicentre was around 80 km (50 miles) north of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain and a popular destination for climbers and trekkers.
Winter is not a popular season for climbers and hikers in Nepal, with a German climber the lone mountaineer with a permit to climb Mount Everest, Reuters reports. He had already left the base camp after failing to reach the summit, Lilathar Awasthi, a Department of Tourism official, said.
Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA) said the tremors were felt in seven hill districts bordering Tibet.
“So far we have not received any information of any loss of life and property,” NDRRMA spokesman Dizan Bhattarai told Reuters. “We have mobilised police, security forces and local authorities to collection information,” he said.
Many villages in the Nepalese border area, which are sparsely populated, are remote and can only be reached by foot.
The Associated Press has put together a short timeline of the worst earthquake to hit China in recent years, including the 2008 Sichuan quake that killed nearly 90,000 people.
It notes that earthquakes in China happen most frequently on the Tibetan Plateau or its fringes. The seismically active area is where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts that can be strong enough to change the heights of Himalayan peaks. Here’s the timeline:
— May 2008: A magnitude 7.9 earthquake leaves nearly 90,000 people dead or missing and presumed dead in Sichuan province.
— April 2010: A magnitude 7.1 earthquake kills 2,698 people in Qinghai province.
— April 2013: A magnitude 7.0 earthquake kills 196 people in Sichuan.
— July 2013: A magnitude 6.6 earthquake kills 95 people in Gansu province.
— August 2014: A magnitude 6.1 earthquake kills 617 people in Yunnan province.
— September 2022: A magnitude 6.8 earthquake kills 93 people in Sichuan.
— December 2023: A magnitude 6.2 earthquake kills at least 126 people in Gansu and Qinghai provinces.
Some more pictures have come in from Lhatse county in Shigatse, the Tibetan city worst hit by the earthquake:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered “all-out” rescue efforts to save lives and minimise casualties, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported.
The president had also “urged efforts to prevent secondary disasters, properly resettle affected residents, and handle the aftermath work effectively”, it reported.
As well as Kathmandu, areas around Lobuche in Nepal in the high mountains near Everest were also rattled by the tremor and aftershocks, AFP reported.
“It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake,” said government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal’s Namche region, which lies nearer to Everest.
But no damage or deaths had been reported so far and security forces had been deployed, Nepali home minister spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari said.
Nepal lies on a major geological faultline where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence.
In 2015, nearly 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured when a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes.
Pictures are starting to trickle in from the areas affected by the earthquake, although they’re still few and far between. Here are a couple from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, where tremors sent people out onto the streets:
At least 53 dead after strong earthquake
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the earthquake in Tibet.
The quake struck near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC) has said, killing at least 53 people and collapsing “many buildings” with tremors also felt in neighbouring Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and parts of India.
The quake struck Dingri county with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal on Tuesday morning, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC). The US Geological Survey reported the tremor as magnitude 7.1.
“Fifty-three people have been confirmed dead, and 62 others injured as of Tuesday noon, after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted Dingri County in the city of Xigaze in Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region at 9:05 am Tuesday,” the official Xinhua news agency said.
Videos published by China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed destroyed houses with walls torn apart and rubble strewn across the ruins in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Temperatures in Dingri are around minus 8 degrees Celsius and will drop to minus 18 this evening, according to the China Meteorological Administration, AFP reported.
The high-altitude county in the Tibet region is home to about 62,000 people and situated on the Chinese side of Mount Everest.
While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday’s quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometre radius in the last five years, the CENC added.
Stay with us as we cover the developments.
