At least 16 die, hundreds of houses collapse as powerful earthquake hits Tibet

BEIJING — A magnitude 7 earthquake hit China’s Tibet region on Thursday evening, killing at least 16 people, injuring dozens and collapsing hundreds of houses, according to state media.The quake hit Baqên County in the northern Nagqu region, Xinhua news agency reported, citing the local emergency management bureau.The county, located in what China calls the Tibet Autonomous Region after annexing it in the 1950s, is 400 km northeast of the region’s capital, Lhasa.Authorities have declared an emergency and deployed rescue teams to the affected area, where 56 others have also been injured.Search and rescue efforts continued following the collapse of at least 339 homes and 20 livestock sheds, the Nagqu media office said, citing city government officials.Power has been cut off and 339 homes have collapsed in the affected region, local reports said.Rockfall has forced roads in the region to close, making it difficult for crews to reach impacted high-altitude areas.Strong tremors were also felt in the cities of Qamdo and Nyingchi in Tibet.Videos on social media show villagers running into the streets as buildings shake violently in the dark, although these have not been independently verified.The region is prone to devastating seismic activity.In 2023, a 6.2 magnitude quake killed more than 120 people in the nearby mountainous Gansu province of China.Tibet and Nepal were also recently devastated by massive floods and landslides less than two months ago, unleashed by a glacier collapse, which killed at least 1,400 people. Hundreds of others are still reported missing.Tibet, which has long demanded greater autonomy, is one of the most tightly controlled regions in China.With foreign media restricted from the region and information heavily censored by authorities, Chinese state media is the main source for updates and details when such disasters happen.More than 1,600 people from the local county were deployed for rescue efforts. Supplies including 1,000 prefabricated housing units, around 3,000 tents and folding beds, as well as flashlights and winter clothing arrived in the region.China’s official news agency Xinhua said on Friday that communication in part of the region has been down. Local railway authorities have taken emergency actions to halt trains passing through the region.The earthquake also caused rockfalls that have forced local authorities to close a section of National Highway 317, allowing only emergency, rescue and official support vehicles through as crews worked to clear debris, according to Xinhua.Intermittent snow is expected in the earthquake region over the next three days, Xinhua said.It was the biggest earthquake in the region in the last five years, China’s national broadcaster CCTV said.The US Geological Survey said the quake occurred at 10:33 p.m. local time, with its epicenter 191 kilometers (119 miles) east-northeast of Nagqu, in a sparsely populated, high-altitude area of northern Tibet. It put the earthquake’s depth at 18 kilometers (11 miles).Nagqu is more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) north of Tibet’s capital, Lhasa.