China-Kyrgyzstan border quake hurts 50
ALMATY, Kazakhstan: At least 50 people were injured after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck along the mountainous China-Kyrgyzstan border on Tuesday, authorities said.
The quake was registered just after 2 a.m. at a depth of 13 kilometers in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, about 140 km (85 miles) west of the city of Aksu.
Local authorities dispatched a team to the quake’s epicenter, Beijing-run Xinhua News Agency said, while about 800 people were on standby for any large disaster relief mission.
The Health Ministry in Kazakhstan said 44 people suffering “various” injuries had sought medical help in Almaty, the Central Asian country’s largest city.
Images posted on social media and by local news outlets showed citizens streaming outside following the quake.
In China’s Akqi County, six people suffered injuries — two of which were “serious” — said a Weibo post by a Xinjiang government media account.
A total of 47 buildings in the county collapsed, while 78 more were damaged, the post added.
Two residential houses and livestock sheds collapsed in the area near the epicenter, in rural Wushi County, Xinhua reported, while electricity was temporarily knocked out.
Video circulating on Chinese social media showed household appliances crashing to the floor as wild shaking rocked homes.
More footage shared by state broadcaster China Central Television showed firemen entering a damaged building with cracked walls and police helping an injured local.
Local TV channels in India’s capital New Delhi reported strong tremors in the city, about 1,400 km away.
One Aksu resident told Xinhua that people rushed outside for safety during the shaking despite the frigid early morning temperatures hovering about -10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit).
Cao Yanglong, in the city on a business trip, told the state news agency that while on the 21st floor of a hotel, he felt like he was “going to be shaken out of bed.”
People also fled their homes to seek refuge on the street in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, said an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter, after the quake caused walls to shake and furniture to shift.
Bohobek Azhikeev, head of the Kyrgyz Ministry for Emergency Situations, said in a video message that “no casualties or damage have been registered” in the city.
Five villages are within 20 km of the epicenter, Xinhua said, and a slew of small aftershocks followed in the area, with magnitudes as high as 5.5.
And on Tuesday morning, the Kazakh seismological agency reported two new tremors of magnitude 5.2 and 5.3 at about 10 a.m. in the same area.
The tremors were felt in Almaty, where schools were closed, an AFP correspondent said.
Tuesday’s earthquake came the day after a landslide buried dozens of people and killed 12 in China’s southwestern Yunnan province.
A December quake in the country’s northwest killed 148 people and displaced thousands in Gansu province.
That quake was China’s deadliest since 2014 when more than 600 people were killed in Yunnan.
In last month’s temblor, subzero temperatures made the aid operation launched in response even more challenging, with survivors huddled around outdoor fires to keep warm.