Eva Deschamps / January 8, 2022
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck early Saturday (local time) in Qinghai, a vast, sparsely populated province in northwestern China, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said.
The epicenter of the quake, which struck at 1:45 a.m. Saturday at a shallow depth of 10 kilometers, was located about 140 kilometers northwest of the provincial capital, Xining, the USGS said.
An aftershock of magnitude 5.1 followed 25 minutes later, again according to the UGS.
This Chinese province with numerous mountain ranges, little urbanized and including vast grasslands, is located on the Tibetan plateau.
In 2010, an earthquake of magnitude 6.9 in Qinghai had left 3,000 people dead or missing.