Chinese authorities announced that 53 people were killed and 62 others were injured in the earthquake that struck the Tibet region early Tuesday morning, in a toll that remains preliminary so far.
According to the Chinese news agency “Xinhua”, the authorities said that the earthquake, which measured 6.8 degrees, shook the northern slopes of the Himalayas in the Tibet region, and caused human losses and shook buildings in Nepal, Bhutan and neighboring India.
For its part, the US Geological Survey reported that the earthquake measured 7.1 degrees on the Richter scale.
The China Earthquake Networks Center said that the epicenter of the earthquake was at a depth of 10 km in Tingri, a rural Chinese county known as the northern gateway to the Everest region.
Xinhua indicated that local government officials are communicating with nearby towns to assess the impact of the earthquake and verify the losses.
The southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are exposed to frequent earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates
