Magnitude-7 Earthquake Strikes Northern Tibet, Leaving at Least 16 Dead

A magnitude-7 earthquake struck northern Tibet on Thursday night, killing at least 16 people and injuring 54, according to Chinese official media. Hundreds of homes were destroyed in and around the regional city of Nagqu.

The Nagqu media office, citing city government officials, said at least 339 homes and 20 livestock sheds collapsed. Search and rescue work was still under way. China's national broadcaster CCTV described it as the biggest quake in the region in the past five years.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor hit at 10.33pm local time on Thursday. Its epicentre was 119 miles (191km) east-north-east of Nagqu, in a sparsely populated, high-altitude part of northern Tibet, at a depth of 11 miles. The agency logged at least seven aftershocks of magnitude 4.3 to 5.2, each at a depth of 6 miles.

Videos released by CCTV captured the moment the ground shook. Workers were seen running out of restaurants, and goods tumbled from supermarket shelves. Footage also showed rescuers climbing through damaged buildings, some with collapsed roofs.

More than 1,600 people from the local county were deployed to assist with rescue efforts. Xinhua reported that over 300 police officers were sent for relief work, and the regional fire and rescue services dispatched almost 350 personnel. Supplies sent to the area included 1,000 prefabricated housing units, about 3,000 tents, folding beds, torches and winter clothing.

Xinhua said on Friday that communications were down in some of the affected areas, and local railway authorities took emergency action to halt trains passing through the region. Rockfalls forced the closure of a section of national highway 317, which was open only to emergency, rescue and official support vehicles while crews cleared debris. Intermittent snow was forecast for the next three days.

Chinese president Xi Jinping called for an all-out effort in the rescue operation and medical relief work.

Nagqu lies more than 185 miles north of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Earthquakes are relatively common in China. In January 2025, at least 126 people died in a quake in Tibet's rural Tingri county. In December 2023, a quake in Gansu province in the north-west killed at least 134 people, according to state media, making it China's deadliest since 2014, when more than 600 people died in the south-western province of Yunnan.

Tibet is particularly seismically active. It was brought under Chinese control in the 1950s, and its predominantly ethnic Tibetan population has had a tense relationship with Beijing since. It is one of China's poorest regions, and many Tibetans reject Beijing-imposed controls on their culture and religion. In August, a disastrous flood hit the border of Tibet and Nepal, but China's tight grip on information kept international media from visiting the affected areas on the Tibetan side, obscuring the scale of the damage.