Steph Deschamps / January 25, 2024
Three people are dead and five injured in China after a magnitude 7 earthquake, which also injured dozens in Kazakhstan's largest city.
The magnitude 7 quake struck Monday night on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan, reported the US Geological Survey (USGS), which estimated that it could have caused significant damage.
The quake was recorded shortly after 2:00 am on Tuesday, at a depth of 27 kilometers, the USGS said, in China's Xinjiang region, around 140 kilometers west of the city of Aksu. Local TV stations in the Indian capital New Delhi, some 1,400 kilometers away, reported tremors.
Shortly afterwards, three aftershocks were recorded in the region, with magnitudes of 5.5, 5.1 and 5.0, the USGS added. "Significant damage is likely and the disaster is potentially widespread," the USGS report said.
The earthquake comes a day after a landslide in southwest China buried dozens of people and killed at least eight. A major earthquake in December in the northwest of the country killed 148 people and left thousands homeless in the northwestern province of Gansu. This was the deadliest earthquake in China since 2014, when more than 600 people were killed in the southwestern province of Yunnan.