Tibet earthquake kills 53 - tremors also felt in Nepal

The official Xinhua News Agency said 62 other people were injured, citing the regional disaster relief headquarters.

The magnitude 7.1 quake struck in a mountainous area in the Tibet region, near the border with Nepal, at a depth of about six miles, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said.

China’s earthquake monitoring agency recorded the magnitude as 6.8. The average altitude in the area around the epicentre is about 13,800 feet, state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) said.

The CCTV online report said there were a handful of communities within three miles) of the epicentre, which was 240 miles from Lhasa, the capital of Tibet.

In the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu, the earthquake sent residents running out of their homes after they were woken up by the tremor. No information was immediately available from the remote, mountainous areas closer to the epicentre across the border.

There have been 10 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6 in the area where Tuesday’s quake hit over the past century, the USGS said. Streets were filled with people woken up by the tremor.

A 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed some 9,000 people and damaged about 1 million structures in Nepal in 2015.