Tremors were reported as far away as northern India and Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, where buildings shook.
Dozens of people have been reported killed after a powerful earthquake hit near Tibet’s second-largest city of Shigatse, according to Chinese and US monitoring groups, with tremors felt hundreds of kilometres away in Nepal.
The earthquake struck at 9:05am local time (01:05 GMT) on Tuesday at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles), according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre, which recorded a magnitude 6.8 quake, while the United States Geological Survey reported the earthquake to be magnitude 7.1.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake is considered strong and capable of causing severe damage. Multiple aftershocks have also been reported, with the largest measuring a magnitude 4.4.
China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that nine people were killed in three townships – Changsuo, Quluo and Cuoguo – in Shigatse’s surrounding Tingri county, where many buildings had collapsed, and local media report that dozens of people are known to have died.
Al Jazeera’s Katrina Yu, reporting from Beijing, said images coming out of the affected areas show many collapsed buildings and homes.
“These are very remote villages in mountainous areas that are difficult to access and that difficulty will be increased by the fact that it is winter now, very cold and not very close to any major city,” Yu said.
“So far, the numbers that we have received from the authorities are 36 dead and 68 people injured. We are, unfortunately, watching that number and expecting that to climb,” she said.
Very strong 7.0 #quake hits near Shigatse, Tibet, China – info, user reports and updates | Jan 7, 2025 09:05 am (Shanghai time): https://t.co/WRKs73D34j
— Earthquake Monitor (@EQAlerts) January 7, 2025
The Reuters news agency said that crumbled shop fronts could be seen in a video showing the aftermath in Lhatse, located about 150km (93 miles) east of Shigatse city, with debris spilling onto the road.
Shigatse is one of Tibet’s holiest cities and the seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most important figures in Tibetan Buddhism, whose spiritual authority is second only to the Dalai Lama.
Powerful tremors were also felt in northern India’s Bihar state and in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, some 400km (248 miles) away, where residents reportedly ran from their houses as buildings shook.
Areas around Lobuche in Nepal’s Himalayan region near Mount Everest were also rattled by the tremors and a series of aftershocks.
“It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake, but we don’t know about any damages yet,” said Jagat Prasad Bhusal, a government official in Nepal’s Namche region, which lies near Everest.
Nepal: An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.1 on the Richter scale struck 93 km northeast of Lobuche, at 06:35:16 IST today. Strong tremors were felt across Kathmandu and other western districts pic.twitter.com/ysEiNulN7L
— IANS (@ians_india) January 7, 2025
There were no reports of casualties in Nepal so far, though police and other security forces have been mobilised to collect information on the impact of the quake, a local official told the Reuters news agency.
Nepal and southwestern parts of China have been hit frequently by earthquakes.
According to CCTV, there have been 29 earthquakes with magnitudes of 3 or higher within 200km (124 miles) of the Shigatse quake epicentre in the past five years, all of which were smaller than the most recent.
A huge earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people.
In 2015, a magnitude 7.8 quake, Nepal’s worst, struck near Kathmandu, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands.