BEIJING (AP) – A strong earthquake killed at least 53 people and trapped many others in Tibet on Tuesday, with dozens of aftershocks in China’s western region and across the border in Nepal.
The state-run Xinhua News Agency said 62 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 seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide, causing an uplift in the Himalayas strong enough to change 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 the epicenter was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Tibet’s capital Lhasa, the region’s second largest city, although there are several communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter. is approximately 23 kilometers (14 miles) away. The largest city of Shigatse, 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.
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Associated Press writer Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal, and researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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