At least 95 people have been confirmed dead and 130 injured after a major earthquake struck Tibet.
The earthquake hit the Chinese territory’s holy Shigatse city at around 9am local time (1am GMT) on Tuesday (January 7) with a magnitude of 7.1 and at a depth of six miles (10 kilometres), according to data from the US Geological Survey.
Many people were left trapped as dozens of aftershocks shook the region in western China and across the border into Nepal.
Rescue workers clambered up mounds of rubble in devastated villages in the frantic search for survivors. Videos posted by China’s Ministry of Emergency Management showed two people carried out on stretchers by workers picking their way across debris from collapsed homes.
The Ministry said about 1,500 fire and rescue workers were involved in the search for people. China’s President Xi Jinping ordered an “all-out” rescue effort to save lives and minimise the number of casualties, according to Xinhua News Agency.
Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing was sent to the area to guide the work as Beijing allocated almost £11million (100 million yuan) for disaster relief.
The US Geological Survey reported the earthquake as measuring magnitude 7.1, adding that its depth was relatively shallow. China recorded the magnitude as 6.8.
The epicentre in Tibet’s Tingri county was about 50 miles (75 kilometers) northeast of Mount Everest, which straddles the border. The area is seismically active and is where the India and Eurasia plates meet, causing uplifts in the Himalayan mountains strong enough to change the heights of some of the world’s tallest peaks.
Footage posted by China’s state broadcaster, CCTV, shows rubble-filled streets and crushed cars. The media outlet said more than 1,000 homes were damaged in the region, which is sparsely populated.
China Earthquake Networks Center said in a social media post that average altitude in the area around the epicentre is about 13,800ft (4,200m). The Mount Everest area was largely empty as even a number of locals had already headed south to escape the bitter cold.
CCTV said there were a handful of communities within three miles (five kilometers) of the epicentre, which was 240 miles (380 kilometers) from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.
It was also about 14 miles (23 kilometers) from the region’s second-largest city of Shigatse, known as Xigaze in Chinese.
The earthquake woke residents up in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, and sent them running out of their homes into the streets.
It is thought to be the strongest earthquake to strike the area in five years and at least 40 aftershocks were reported reported after it struck.
Earthquakes in China happen most frequently on the Tibetan Plateau or its fringes. A 7.9 earthquake in Sichuan province in the southwest killed nearly 90,000 people in May 2008.
The collapse of schools and other buildings led to a years-long effort to rebuild, using more quake-resistant materials.
