China: an earthquake kills at least 127 people in the northwest
Steph Deschamps / December 21, 2023
Rescuers were scrambling to find survivors in the rubble of remote villages in bitterly cold conditions at dusk on Tuesday, following a powerful earthquake that killed at least 127 people in northwest China the previous night, the country's deadliest in nearly a decade.
The earthquake struck just before midnight on Monday, around 1,300 km southwest of Beijing in Gansu province near the border with Qinghai province.
At least 113 people were killed and more than 530 injured in Gansu province after the violent earthquake, according to a new count provided Tuesday evening by state media.
The disaster also left 14 people dead and 198 injured in Haidong, a town in neighboring Qinghai province, according to the state-run newspaper People's Daily.
The earthquake damaged more than 155,000 homes, according to state broadcaster CCTV, and sent residents running for cover in the cold.
This is the deadliest earthquake in China since 2014, when more than 600 people died in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
According to the China News Agency, the 6.2 magnitude tremor was felt as far away as the major city of Xi'an, some 570 kilometers from the epicenter.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) measured a shallow earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 at 23:59 local time, with the epicenter some 100 km from Lanzhou, the regional capital of Gansu.
The quake was followed by dozens of other tremors, and the authorities warned that further quakes of magnitude over 5 were to be expected in the coming days.