Strong earthquake hits Tibet’s Shigatse, tremors felt in Nepal’s Kathmandu | Earthquake News
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Earthquakes were reported in northern India and in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, where buildings shook.
A powerful earthquake struck Tibet’s second-largest city, Shigatse, according to Chinese and American monitoring groups, with tremors felt hundreds of kilometers away in Nepal.
The earthquake occurred at 9:05am local time (01:05 GMT) on Tuesday at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center, which recorded a 6.8 magnitude quake, while the United States Geological Survey reports on this. The earthquake was magnitude 7.1.
A 6.8 magnitude earthquake is considered strong and capable of causing significant damage.
China’s state broadcaster CCTV said there were a number of communities within 5km (3 miles) of the quake’s epicenter, which is about 380km (236 miles) from Tibet’s capital, Lhasa.
Reuters news agency said that collapsed shops can be seen in a video showing what happened in the nearby town of Shigatse, Lhatse, with debris spilling onto the road.
The strongest is 7.0 #to shake hits near Shigatse, Tibet, China – information, user reports and reviews | Jan 7, 2025 09:05 am (Shanghai time):
– Earthquake Monitor (@EQAlerts) January 7, 2025
China’s news agency, Xinhua, said the earthquake caused houses in Tonglai village, Tibet’s Tingri region, to collapse and that possible casualties were being assessed.
A powerful earthquake was felt in the northern Indian state of Bihar and in Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, 400 kilometers (248 miles) away, where residents were reported to have fled their homes as buildings shook.
Areas around Lobuche in the Himalayan region of Nepal near Mount Everest were also shaken by the tremor and a series of aftershocks.
“There was a lot of shaking here, everyone is awake, but we don’t know about the damage yet,” said Jagat Prasad Bhusal, a government official in Nepal’s Namche district, which is close to Everest.
The southwestern parts of China are often hit by earthquakes.
According to CCTV, there have been 29 earthquakes of magnitude 3 or more within 200km (124 miles) of the Shigatse epicenter in the past five years, all of which were smaller than the latest.
A massive earthquake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed nearly 70,000 people.
In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake, Nepal’s worst, struck near Kathmandu, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands.
