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BEIJING — A strong earthquake struck Tibet on Tuesday, killing at least 32 people and leaving dozens of others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook China’s western region and across the border in Nepal.
State news agency Xinhua reported that 38 other people were injured, citing the Regional Disaster Relief Headquarters.
About 1,500 fire and rescue workers were called in to search for people in the rubble, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 7.1 and was relatively shallow at about 10 kilometers (6 miles) deep. China recorded a magnitude of 6.8.
The epicenter was about 75 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Everest, which straddles the border. The region is highly seismically active, with the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates causing strong uplifts in the Himalayas that have changed the heights of some of the world’s highest peaks.
The average elevation around the epicenter was about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Earthquake Network Center said in a social media post.
State broadcaster CCTV said several communities were within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter. The epicenter was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from Lhasa, the region’s second largest city. Shigatse city known as Shigatse in Chinese.
Some 230 kilometers away in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, the quake woke up residents and rushed them out of their homes and onto the streets. No information was immediately available from Nepal’s remote mountainous regions near the epicenter.
The area where Tuesday’s quake occurred has seen at least 10 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater in the past 100 years, according to the USGS.
Associated Press writer Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal, and researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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