The provisional death toll rose to 95 deaths, according to state media. “A total of 95 people died and 130 others were injured,” the Xinhua news agency said. A previous report reported 53 deaths.
Many collapsed buildings
Videos broadcast by Chinese public television CCTV show white-colored homes at high altitude, with gutted walls and collapsed roofs, with numerous stones littering the ground. Other images from the channel show firefighters in helmets and orange outfits heading towards the scene of the disaster, or even SUVs in a street, buried under bricks from the affected buildings.
“The tremors were very strongly felt in and around Dingri canton and many buildings collapsed near the epicenter,” CCTV said.
She reported “multiple aftershocks” since Tuesday morning, the largest being magnitude 4.4.
Up to -18°C
New China indicated that local authorities were going to the various communes of the canton “to assess the repercussions of the earthquake”.
While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday’s quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometer radius in the last five years, the CENC said.
Temperatures there are around -8°C during the day and could drop to -18°C tonight, according to China’s National Meteorological Bureau.
This high altitude canton has around 62,000 inhabitants and is located not far from the Chinese side of Everest.
Near Everest Base Camp
In Nepal, in addition to Kathmandu, the areas around Namche and Lobuche, very close to the Everest base camp, were also hit by the earthquake and its aftershocks.
“It shook quite hard here, everyone is awake but we are not aware of any damage at the moment,” said Jagat Prasad Bhusal, an official in the Namche region in northeastern Nepal.
The Himalayas lie on the divide between the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates and experience regular seismic activity.
In 2015, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and injured more than 22,000 in Nepal, destroying more than 500,000 homes.
