BREAKBREAK,
Tremors were reported in northern India and the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, where buildings shook.
A powerful earthquake struck Tibet’s second-largest city, Shigatse, with tremors also felt hundreds of miles away in Nepal, according to Chinese and U.S. monitoring groups.
The earthquake struck at 9:05 a.m. local time (01:05 GMT) on Tuesday at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center, which registered a magnitude 6.8 quake during The United States Geological Survey reported this as a magnitude 7.1 earthquake.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 is considered strong and can cause severe damage.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV said there were a handful of communities within 5 km (3 miles) of the earthquake’s epicenter, which is about 380 km (236 miles) from the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
Reuters news agency said a video showing the aftermath from Shigatse’s nearby town of Lhatse showed collapsed storefronts, with debris falling onto the street.
Very strong 7.0 #Quake Hits near Shigatse, Tibet, China – Info, user reports and updates | January 7, 2025, 9:05 a.m. (Shanghai time): https://t.co/WRKs73D34j
— Earthquake Monitor (@EQAlerts) January 7, 2025
China’s Xinhua news agency said the earthquake collapsed houses in Tonglai village in Tibet’s Tingri county and the possible death toll was being investigated.
Strong tremors were also felt in the northern Indian state of Bihar and in the Nepalese capital Kathmandu, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) away, where residents reportedly fled their homes as buildings shook.
Areas around Lobuche in Nepal’s Himalayan region near Mount Everest were also shaken by the tremors and a series of aftershocks.
“It shook pretty hard here, everyone is awake, but we don’t know about any damage yet,” said Jagat Prasad Bhusal, a government official in Nepal’s Namche region, which is near Everest.
Southwestern parts of China are frequently hit by earthquakes.
According to CCTV, there have been 29 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or higher within 200 km (124 miles) of the epicenter of the Shigatse quake in the past five years, all smaller than the most recent one.
A massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed nearly 70,000 people.
In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 quake struck near Kathmandu, the worst in Nepal, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands.
