The quake hit at 9:05 a.m. (0105 GMT), with its epicenter located in Tingri, a rural Chinese county known as the northern gateway to the Everest region, at a depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), according to the China Earthquake Networks Center. The US Geological Service put the quake’s magnitude at 7.1.
One hundred and thirty people died and several more were injured when a powerful earthquake struck Tibet Tuesday media, news agency AFP reported quoting Xinhua news agency.
The quake struck Dingri County with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal at 6:35 am on Tuesday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC).
The US Geological Survey registered the earthquake with a 7.1 magnitude. Some houses in Dingri collapsed during the earthquake, AFP reported quoting Xinhua, citing a work team stationed in the county.
The news agency said that "local authorities are reaching out to various townships in the county to assess the impact of the quake".
In Nepal, the earthquake sent residents running out of their homes in the capital, Kathmandu, Associated Press reported. Streets were filled with people woken up by the tremor.
Areas around Lobuche in Nepal in the high mountains near Mount Everest were also rattled by the tremors and a series of aftershocks.
"It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake, but we don't know about any damages yet," AP quoted government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal's Namche region, which lies nearer to Everest.
“We felt a very strong earthquake. So far we have not received any report of injuries or physical loss,” said Anoj Raj Ghimire, chief district officer of Solukhumbu district in Nepal, at the foot of Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
“We have mobilized police and other security forces as well as locals to collect information about the damage,” he added.
The quake also jolted Thimphu, the capital of Bhutan, and the northern Indian state of Bihar which borders Nepal.
So far, no reports of any damage or loss to property have been received, officials in India said.
Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are frequently hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates.
A huge quake in China’s Sichuan province in 2008 killed almost 70,000 people, while a magnitude 7.8 tremor struck near Katmandu in 2015, killing about 9,000 people and injuring thousands in Nepal’s worst ever earthquake.
