Beijing – A powerful earthquake killed at least 53 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others stranded as a series of aftershocks rattled the region in western China and across the border in Nepal.
An official Xinhua News Agency said another 62 people were injured, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.
About 1,500 firefighters and rescuers have been assigned to search for people in the rubble, said the Department of Emergency Management.
The US Geological Survey said the earthquake measured 7.1 magnitude and was very shallow at a depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles). China recorded the maximum as 6.8.
The incident was about 75 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Mount Everest, which crosses the border. This area is seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide and create the Himalayan mountain range that is strong enough to change the height of some of the world’s tallest peaks.
The average elevation in the area around the event is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Earthquake Networks Center said on social media.
State broadcaster CCTV said there were a number of communities within 5 kilometers (3 miles) of where the incident began, which was 380 kilometers (240 miles) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, and about 23 kilometers (14 miles) from the second- largest city of Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.
About 230 kilometers (140 miles) from Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, the earthquake jolted residents and sent them fleeing from their homes to the streets. No information was immediately available from remote, mountainous areas of Nepal close to the base.
There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 in the area where Tuesday’s quake struck in the past 100 years, the USGS said.
— Associated Press writer Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu, Nepal, and researcher Yu Bing in Beijing contributed to this report.
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