Magnitude 7 Earthquake Hits Tibet, China's Strongest Since 2024
The quake struck a remote high-altitude county in Nagqu at 10:33 p.m. local time Thursday — 10:33 a.m. Eastern. No casualties or damage have been reported yet.
A magnitude 7 earthquake struck Tibet’s Nagqu region Thursday night, the strongest to hit China since January 2024.
The quake hit at 10:33 p.m. local time, the China Earthquake Networks Center said. That was 10:33 a.m. Eastern on Thursday. The U.S. Geological Survey, which measured the quake at magnitude 7.0, put the epicenter about 183 kilometers east-northeast of the city of Nagqu.
The epicenter was in a high-altitude county roughly 400 kilometers from Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, according to China’s seismic agency. It listed the depth at 10 kilometers. Shallow quakes tend to shake harder near the surface. The average elevation within five kilometers of the epicenter is about 4,864 meters.
The quake was clearly felt in the local area, the agency said. The USGS had no felt reports from the ground in the first hour after the quake.
It is not yet known whether anyone was hurt or what was damaged.
The last quake this strong in China came in January 2024. In 2010, a magnitude 7.1 quake struck Yushu, about 280 kilometers from Thursday’s epicenter in neighboring Qinghai province. That quake killed at least 2,698 people and left nearly 300 missing.
