(UPDATE) A major earthquake struck near a holy city in China’s Tibet region on Tuesday, killing at least 126 people and injuring more than 150 while damaging thousands of buildings, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.
The quake hit around 9:05 a.m. local time near Tibet’s second most populous city, Shigatse, in the Himalayan foothills in southwestern China, Chinese state media said.
The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake at 7.1 magnitude. Tremors were felt hundreds of miles away in neighboring Bhutan, India and Nepal.
Chinese state media showed images of buildings with caved-in roofs and cars and streets smashed by rubble. About 6,900 people live within 12 miles of the quake’s epicenter, which is about 100 miles southwest of Shigatse, according to the reports. Several aftershocks were recorded, including one measured at magnitude 4.4.
Xinhua cited local authorities as saying that more than 3,000 houses had collapsed and that 407 trapped people had been rescued. It said some 30,000 people had been evacuated.
Chinese leader Xi Jinping instructed authorities to give priority to emergency rescue efforts and medical treatment, repair infrastructure and ensure the affected could handle the winter.
With a population of about 800,000, Shigatse is an important site in Tibetan Buddhism. It is the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, the religion’s second-highest leader behind the Dalai Lama. The city, known in China as Xigaze, sits at an altitude above 12,000 feet.
In neighboring Nepal, strong tremors were felt in the capital Kathmandu and other areas but no deaths or significant damage were reported, according to local police.
A person in the city fractured his leg after jumping from a building during the earthquake, a police spokesman said. In some Himalayan districts of Nepal, where the border with Tibet runs across the peak of Mt. Everest, some mud houses suffered minor damage, he said.
Earthquakes are common in Tibet because of the convergence of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. This tectonic activity formed the Himalayas and continues to lift the mountain range by a few millimeters a year.
The Chinese earthquake agency measured the quake at a slightly lower magnitude of 6.8. Both the Chinese and American measurements put the quake roughly on par with the 1989 earthquake that struck Northern California during a broadcast of the World Series, killing 63 people and damaging buildings and roadways, including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
