Thousands in freezing weather after China quake

UCHTURPAN, China — Aftershocks from a magnitude 7.1 earthquake continued to rock western China on Wednesday, while more than 12,000 displaced people relying on tents and shelters lit bonfires to fend off freezing weather.

The quake early Tuesday in a remote part of China’s Xinjiang region killed three people and left five injured, owing both to the sparse population and efforts in recent years to improve the durability of housing around the epicenter in Uchturpan county, near the border with Kyrgyzstan.

But at least several hundred livestock, key to local livelihoods, were killed.

Footage shown by state broadcaster CCTV showed evacuees eating instant noodles in tents, with bonfires providing heat. Local officials said they planned to check houses for stability before people could return.

Towns and villages were scattered across an otherwise barren landscape. A two-lane highway runs about 78 miles from the nearest city of Aksu, with power lines and an occasional cement factory nearly the only signs of human presence.

The area is populated mostly by Kyrgyz and Uyghurs, ethnic Turkic minorities who are predominantly Muslim and have been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass detention. The region is heavily militarized, and state broadcaster CCTV showed paramilitary troops moving in to clear rubble and set up tents for those displaced.

Two of the three people who died were members of a Kyrgyz sheepherding family who had brought their flock up a mountain and spent the night in their rest hut, said Shi Chao, the Communist Party head of Kulansarike township.

Rescuers found the family of three, including a 6-year old girl, and brought them down the mountain, but only the father survived, Shi said.