Strong Earthquake Hits Remote Tibet in Western China, Killing Dozens

Chinese state media said at least 126 people had died in the magnitude 7.1 quake near an area of religious significance in Tibet. It was felt in neighboring Nepal.

[ABS News Service/08.01.2025]

Using their hands and shovels in frigid conditions, rescue workers dug through the rubble in the search for survivors after a deadly magnitude 7.1 earthquake toppled houses and jolted people awake in a remote part of Tibet on Tuesday (07.01.2025) near the northern foothills of Mount Everest.

At least 126 people have died and 188 were injured in the quake, which struck shortly after 9 a.m. at a depth of 6.2 miles in Dingri County, near one of Tibet’s most historic cities, in western China, state media reported. The quake was the country’s deadliest since December 2023, when 151 people were killed in a magnitude 6.2 temblor in the northwestern provinces of Gansu and Qinghai.

China’s state broadcaster reported that more than 1,000 houses had experienced some form of damage in Dingri County, where the average elevation is around 15,000 feet, along the Himalayan border with Nepal.

Frantic rescue efforts were being conducted without heavy equipment, underscoring the challenge in delivering resources to the largely isolated communities damaged by the quake. With temperatures in the region dipping as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius), rescue workers have a short window in which to locate survivors. It was not immediately clear how many residents had been left homeless.

Several aftershocks were felt in the area, including in Nepal. The quake had a magnitude of 7.1, according to the United States Geological Survey, though it was measured as 6.8 by the China Earthquake Networks Center.

The nearest city to the earthquake’s epicenter was Shigatse, the second-largest city in Tibet, with a population of 640,000. Shigatse is home to the vast, centuries-old Tashilhunpo Monastery, the traditional seat of the Panchen Lama, one of the most senior figures in Tibetan Buddhism. State media said that no damage to the monastery had been reported so far.

Tibet is one of the most inaccessible and underdeveloped parts of China. Security has been heightened for decades because of tensions between Beijing and Tibetans, many of whom have long struggled to maintain their religious freedom and cultural identity in a country dominated by Han Chinese. International journalists are forbidden from traveling independently in the region.

Scenes of destruction were broadcast on state media and shared on social media. A tourist not far from Shigatse who spoke to The New York Times said she was in her hotel room when the earthquake started shaking her building. She said that the electricity went out and that she and a friend had squatted between the beds. When the shaking stopped, they ran out of the building.

The tourist, who only gave her surname, Xu, shared a video showing several single-story brick buildings with collapsed walls. Video posted on Chinese social media showed streets strewed with rubble, cars crushed by fallen bricks, and roads split open by the shifted ground. Ms. Xu said that she grabbed her down jacket before she ran out.

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, ordered officials to minimize casualties and resettle survivors. The Chinese authorities deployed 3,400 rescuers and more than 340 medical workers for the search effort, and dispatched tents, folding beds, winter coats and quilts, state media reported.

Rescue efforts could be affected by bottlenecks caused by damaged roads, said Robert Barnett, a professor from SOAS University of London, who has visited the region and described it as looking like “vast moonscape.”

“This is harsh, high altitude land,” Mr. Barnett said. “The roads are quite few and susceptible to landslides.”

That said, Mr. Barnett added that there could be new roads connecting some of Dingri County’s most remote border villages built in recent years to assert China’s sovereignty along its periphery.

The Himalayan region is prone to powerful earthquakes. In 2015, a quake in Nepal with a magnitude of 7.8 killed nearly 9,000 people. In Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, residents streamed out of their homes in the morning as the earthquake rattled buildings.

At least two people, one in Kathmandu and another one in Sindhupalchowk, a district north of Kathmandu, sustained minor injuries from the quake, according to the Nepalese police.

Nepal sent more than 2,500 police officers to assess damage and look for victims.

“Based on the magnitude of the earthquake, there could be some damage in mountains of eastern Nepal,” said Lok Bijaya Adhikari, a senior seismologist at Nepal’s National Earthquake Monitoring and Research Center.

Most residents from Nepal’s high mountain regions such as Everest, Makalu, Rolwaling and Kanchenjunga have migrated to lowland areas to avoid the extreme cold of winter.

“Although most people migrate to lower land during winter season, some are still there,” said Ang Tshering Sherpa, the former chief of the Nepal Mountaineering Association. “There’s always risk of avalanche and glacial lake outburst floods after earthquakes.”