Beijing — A powerful earthquake killed at least 95 people in Tibet on Tuesday and left many others trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the region in western China and across the border with Nepal. The official Xinhua news agency said another 130 people were injured, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.
About 1,500 firefighters and rescue workers were deployed to search for people in the rubble, the Ministry of Emergency Management said.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured 7.1 magnitude and was relatively shallow, at a depth of about six miles. China recorded a magnitude of 6.8.
Xinhua via AP
The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the border. The region is seismically active and is where the Indian and Eurasian plates collide and cause uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the height of some of the world’s highest peaks.
The average altitude in the area around the epicenter is about 4,200 meters (13,800 feet), the China Seismic Network Center said in a social media post.
State broadcaster CCTV said there were a handful of communities within five kilometers of the epicenter, which was 240 kilometers from Lhasa, Tibet’s capital, and about 22 kilometers from the second largest large city in the region, Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.
About 220 km away, in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, the earthquake woke residents and sent them out of their homes onto the streets. No information was immediately available in Nepal’s remote mountainous regions, closer to the epicenter.
There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 over the past century in the area hit by Tuesday’s quake, the USGS said.
Tibet is an autonomous region of China administered largely by its own democratically elected government, but under the control of Beijing, which claims sovereignty over the territory, insisting it has been Chinese for hundreds of years. Chinese military forces intervened to suppress an independence uprising in 1959, sending the Dalai Lamathe anointed spiritual leader of the region, goes into exile in India.
The Dalai Lama, now 89, remained in southern India for decades, but is still considered the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people across the world. China considers him a disruptor of pro-Tibetan independence, even calling him a “wolf in monk’s robes.”
In a statement Published on his website on Tuesday, the Dalai Lama said he was “deeply saddened to learn of the devastating earthquake that struck Dingri in Tibet and surrounding areas”.
He noted “the tragic loss of many lives, numerous injuries and the extensive destruction of homes and property”, and offered his prayers for those affected by the disaster and his hopes for a speedy recovery.
