A powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck a mountainous region in Tibet and neighbouring Nepal on Tuesday morning, damaging buildings and reportedly killing at least 32 people.
The earthquake was centered in Tibet’s Dingri County in Xigaze City at a depth of about 10km, the US Geological Survey reported. China‘s earthquake centre had placed the magnitude at 6.8.
At least 38 others sustained injuries in Tibet, Chinese state media Xinhua reported, while so far there have been no reported casualties from Nepal.
Crumbled shop fronts could be seen in a video showing the aftermath from the nearby town of Lhatse, with debris spilling out onto the road.
“It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake, but we don’t know about any damages yet,” government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal’s Namche region told AFP.
The tremors were felt in India, Bhutan and Bangladesh, forcing people to step out of their houses.
“A reporter learned from the Tibet Autonomous Region earthquake bureau that people have been killed, involving three townships including Changsuo township, Quluo township, and Cuoguo township in Dingri County,” Xinhua news agency reported. It added many buildings had collapsed in Dingri County following the quake.
Tremors were felt in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu some 400km away from the epicenter, where residents ran from their houses.
“We felt a very strong earthquake. So far we have not received any report of injuries or physical loss,” said Anoj Raj Ghimire, chief district officer of Solukhumbu district in Nepal.
“We have mobilised police and other security forces as well as locals to collect information about the damage,” he told Reuters.
The epicenter was located where the India and Eurasia plates clash and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.
There are about a handful of communities within 5km of the epicenter, which is 380km from the Tibetan capital, state broadcaster CCTV reported.
There have been 29 earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 or higher within 200km of the Shigatse quake in the past five years, all of which were smaller than the one that struck on Tuesday morning.
In November 2023, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake shook northwestern Nepal, killing at least 138 people and injuring dozens.
In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck near Kathmandu in neighbouring Nepal, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in that country’s worst earthquake
A huge quake in Sichuan province in southwestern China in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people.