A shallow magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck China’s far western region of Xinjiang yesterday, the US Geological Survey said, with at least six people killed according to Chinese officials.
The Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs said that at least 3,000 homes either collapsed or were seriously damaged and 1,000 tents were being sent to the region.
Many traditional houses in the mainly ethnic Uighur region collapsed when the shallow magnitude 6.4 quake struck about 160km northwest of the southern city of Hotan, Chinese emergency officials said.
Photo: AFP
It was 20km deep according to the survey, which initially gave the magnitude as 6.1. A series of aftershocks followed with the strongest measuring 4.8, the survey said.
The area is on the edge of the Taklamakan desert, but the civil affairs ministry said six people had died.
Xinhua news agency said 48 people had been injured and cited officials saying an airport in Hotan had been closed.
Li Hua, a worker at a state-owned farm in Pishan, which has a population of 258,000, mainly Uighurs, told Xinhua that he felt the quake strongly, with his fourth-floor apartment shaking for about a minute.
“I’m feeling dizzy,” it quoted Li as saying.
State broadcaster China Central Television showed footage of items falling off shelves in a local supermarket when the quake struck, and cracked walls at a fire station.
The China Earthquake Network Center gave the magnitude as 6.5.
China is regularly hit by earthquakes, particularly in its southwestern provinces of Sichuan and Yunnan.
Nepal, on the other side of the Himalayas, was hit by a devastating tremor in April which killed more than 8,800 people.
In May 2008, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake rocked Sichuan, killing more than 80,000 people and flattening swathes of the province in China’s worst earthquake for more than three decades.
In October last year, hundreds of people were injured and more than 100,000 displaced after a shallow 6.0 magnitude tremor hit Yunnan Province, close to China’s borders with Myanmar and Laos.
In August last year, a magnitude 6.1 quake struck Yunnan, killing more than 600 people.
Additional reporting by bloomberg
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