A magnitude 7 earthquake struck on Tuesday on the border between China and Kyrgyzstan, reported the United States Geological Survey (USGS), which estimated that it could have caused casualties and significant damage. The quake was recorded shortly after 2 a.m. Tuesday (6 p.m. GMT Monday), at a depth of 27 kilometers, the USGS said, in China’s Xinjiang region, about 140 kilometers west of the city of Aksu.
Local television channels in the Indian capital New Delhi, some 1,400 kilometers away, reported tremors. Shortly afterward, three aftershocks were recorded in the region, with magnitudes of 5.5, 5.1 and 5.0, the USGS added, estimating that casualties were possible, although none were reported. immediately reported in the mountainous and rural area where the earthquake occurred. “Significant damage is likely and the disaster is potentially widespread,” says the American institute’s report.
This earthquake comes the day after a landslide which buried dozens of people and left at least eight dead in southwest China. A major earthquake occurred in December in the northwest of the country and left 148 dead and thousands homeless in the province of Gansu (northwest). The earthquake was the deadliest in China since 2014, when more than 600 people were killed in Yunnan province, in the southwest of the country.