A powerful earthquake killed at least 53 people and trapped scores in Tibet on Tuesday, while dozens of aftershocks struck areas in western China and across the border in Nepal.
The official Xinhua news agency cited the regional disaster relief headquarters as saying that 62 other people were injured.
The Ministry of Emergency Management said about 1,500 firefighters and rescue workers were deployed to search for people in the debris.
The US Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.1 magnitude and was relatively shallow at a depth of about 10 kilometers (6 mi). China recorded intensity 6.8.
The earthquake’s epicenter was about 75 kilometers (50 mi) northeast of Mount Everest, which lies along the border. The region is seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide, creating a bulge in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the height of some of the world’s highest peaks.
The China Earthquake Network Center said in a social media post that the average elevation in the area around the epicenter was about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet).
State broadcaster CCTV said there were a handful of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of the epicenter, which is 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Tibet’s capital, Lhasa, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the region’s other epicenters. The largest city of Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.
About 230 kilometers (140 miles) away in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, the earthquake woke residents and sent them running out of their homes into the streets. No information was immediately available from the remote hilly areas of Nepal near the epicenter of the earthquake.
The USGS said the area where Tuesday’s quake struck has seen 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 in the past century.