Kathmandu: A strong overnight earthquake rattled a mountainous region of northwestern China, authorities said Tuesday, destroying homes, leaving residents out in a below-freezing winter night and killing 127 people in the nation’s deadliest quake in nine years.
The magnitude 6.2 earthquake struck just before midnight on Monday, injuring more than 700 people, damaging roads and knocking out power and communication lines in Gansu and Qinghai provinces, officials and Chinese media reports said. As emergency workers searched for the missing in collapsed buildings and at least one landslide, people who lost their homes were preparing to spend a cold winter night in tents at hastily erected evacuation sites.
The earthquake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometers (6 miles) in Gansu’s Jishishan county, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the provincial boundary with Qinghai, the China Earthquake Networks Center said. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the magnitude at 5.9.
State broadcaster CCTV said 113 were confirmed dead in Gansu and another 536 injured in the province. Fourteen others were killed and 198 injured in Qinghai, in an area north of the epicenter, according to the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official mouthpiece.
News source: AP