At least 95 people died and 130 were injured after a 6.8 magnitude earthquake hit the mountainous region of Tibet, China, in the early hours of Tuesday (7). The epicenter occurred about 80 km north of Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world.
The earthquake, at a depth of 10 km, caused the collapse of numerous buildings and was also felt in India, Nepal and Bhutan, although no deaths were recorded in these three countries.
Videos published by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV show destroyed homes with collapsed walls and rubble in the streets. According to the Xinhua news agency, the regime sent more than 1,500 firefighters and rescuers to the affected areas, in addition to around 22,000 items, including blankets, tents, folding beds and coats, to be distributed among the victims.
According to the China Earthquake Network Center, the body responsible for monitoring earthquakes in the country, the tremor occurred at 9:05 am local time (10:05 pm the day before in Brasília) and had a magnitude of 6.8 — the United States Geological Survey estimated it at 7 ,1.
Its epicenter was in Tingri, a rural county near the border with Nepal. Around 6,900 people live in municipalities and areas located up to 20 km away.
Although tremors are common in this region, this Tuesday’s is the most intense recorded within a radius of 200 km in the last five years, according to the Chinese Seismic Center.
Mount Everest is also close to the earthquake core, and many climbers usually leave the region to begin climbing the peak. A German climber was the only climber permitted to climb Everest, but he had already left base camp after failing to reach the summit, tourism department official Lilathar Awasthi said. Beijing announced that it had closed the area to tourists.
CCTV showed images of cars buried under bricks and supermarket customers fleeing as the tremor caused shelves to shake and products to fall to the floor. Firefighters in orange uniforms moved through the destruction, tending to survivors and elderly people wrapped in thick blankets, according to the broadcast.
The impact of the earthquake was felt throughout the region of Shigatse, a holy city in Tibet, home to 800,000 people, where nine people died. The place is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism. Many houses in the city of Shigatse were reduced to rubble. Rescue teams removed an injured person who was in one of the houses in that area.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for “large-scale search and rescue efforts, minimizing casualties as much as possible, properly relocating affected residents, and ensuring their safety and well-being in winter.”
The Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader who fled his homeland in 1959 after it was taken over by China, said he was deeply saddened. “I offer my prayers to those who lost their lives and extend my wishes for a speedy recovery to all those injured,” the Nobel Peace Prize laureate said in a message.
Tingri’s thermometers registered -8°C in the morning, and were expected to drop to -18°C later, according to the China Meteorological Administration.
The tremor was also felt in the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu, located more than 200 km from the epicenter, where residents had to leave their homes, and in Lobuche, a Nepalese village close to the Everest base camp. It even hit the state of Bihar, India, but in none of these cases were there any reports of injuries. The tremor also shook Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan.
Nepal is located on a fault line where the Indian tectonic plate presses against the Eurasian plate, which formed the Himalayan mountain range and makes earthquakes frequent in the area.
Since 1950, there have been 21 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater in the Lhasa block, with the largest being a magnitude 6.9 in Mainling in 2017, according to CCTV. Mainling is located in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River in Tibet, where China plans to build the world’s largest hydroelectric dam.
In 2015, almost 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured due to a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in the country. More than 500,000 homes were destroyed.
In January 2024, three people died and dozens were injured in a magnitude 7 earthquake in the mountainous area of China.
A month earlier, another earthquake, this one in Gansu province, left 148 people dead and forced thousands of people to move. It was the deadliest earthquake in the territory since 2014, when more than 600 people died in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
