A powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake rocked China early Tuesday, injuring several people and destroying dozens of homes near the border with Kyrgyzstan.
The tremor centered around a mountainous and remote part of the Asian nation's far-western Xinjiang region. State media reported multiple injuries as heavy quakes were felt even in Central Asian nations that were located hundreds of miles away.
The earthquake struck Wushi County, which is also known as Uqturpan County, located in Aksu prefecture near the Kyrgyzstan border. Residents in the area reportedly felt the shaking shortly after 2:00 a.m. local time.
Powerful tremors destroyed two houses and also downed two major power lines near the epicenter but fortunately, electricity was quickly restored to affected households. The Xinjiang Railway authority quickly sealed off routes in areas that were impacted by the quake and suspended 27 trains' operations.
There were three people who were reported to have been hospitalized in a township found 26 kilometers away from the epicenter of the earthquake. Authorities were also able to rescue a child from the rubble of a home in that particular township, as per CNN.
Roughly 200 rescue workers have already been dispatched to the quake zone and hundreds more are now being assembled. Over 50 aftershocks above magnitude 3 were reported as of 11:00 a.m. on Tuesday following the initial quake.
The epicenter of the tremor was a sparsely populated area at an altitude above 3,000 meters. There were five villages located within a radius of 20 kilometers from the center of the quake, which was roughly 50 kilometers from Wushi County's main urban area.
The region has a population of roughly 205,000 and the heavy tremors were felt in cities that were located hundreds of miles away. These include the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar and Hotan found in southern Xinjiang.
Destroying Dozens of Homes
Officials also reported six people getting injured, two of which had serious injuries and four had minor injuries. On top of the destroyed houses, 78 others were damaged while some agricultural structures collapsed, according to the Associated Press.
After conducting safety checks that there were no problems on the train lines, Urumqi Railroad Bureau resumed services after 7:00 a.m. The United States Geological Survey said that the earthquake measured magnitude 7.0 and occurred in the Tian Shan mountain range.
The agency noted that it the largest recorded earthquake in the past century was 7.1 and happened in 1978 roughly 200 kilometers to the north of where the epicenter of the Tuesday tremor was.
In a video uploaded on social media, household appliances could be seen crashing to the floor as wild shaking rocked the building. Additional footage showed firemen entering a damaged building with cracked walls and law enforcement personnel helping an injured local.
A resident from Aksu said that people in the area rushed outside for safety amid the powerful earthquake despite the frigid early morning temperatures that hovered around -10 degrees Celsius, said Channel News Asia.
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