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At least 118 killed, hundreds injured in northwest China earthquake

Collapsed buildings are seen after an earthquake in Dahejia, Jishishan county, Gansu province in northwest China, Dec. 19, 2023. (AFP Photo)

At least 118 people were killed and hundreds more injured Tuesday in northwest China’s deadliest earthquake in years. Officials in impoverished Gansu province said the shallow tremor just before midnight had caused the deaths of at least 105 and injured almost 400 as of Tuesday morning.

A further 13 died, 182 were injured and 20 were missing in the city of Haidong in neighboring Qinghai province, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The quake damaged thousands of homes – many of them ramshackle brick structures – and sent residents running into the freezing streets for safety.

“I was almost scared to death. Look at how my hands and legs are shaking,” said a woman of about 30 in a video posted to a social media account associated with the state-run People’s Daily newspaper.

“As soon as I ran out of the house, the earth on the mountain gave way, thudding on the roof,” she said as she sat swaddled in a blanket outside, cradling a baby.

Footage from CCTV showed family possessions strewn among masonry from a house that caved in during the shaking.

The quake was China’s deadliest since at least 2014, when more than 600 people died in southwestern Yunnan province.

China’s western hinterland carries the scars of frequent seismic activity, and a huge quake in Sichuan province in 2008 left more than 87,000 people dead or missing, including 5,335 schoolchildren.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday night’s magnitude-5.9 quake struck at a shallow depth at 11:59 p.m. local time (03.59 p.m. GMT) with an epicenter around 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Gansu’s provincial capital, Lanzhou.

China’s state news agency Xinhua reported the magnitude as 6.2 and said the shaking was felt as far away as the major city of Xi’an, about 570 kilometers (350 miles) away.

Dozens of smaller aftershocks followed, and officials warned that tremors with a magnitude of more than 5.0 were possible in the next few days.

A quake measured at magnitude 5.2 by USGS was detected further northwest in the Xinjiang region Tuesday morning.

By Agence France-Presse – AFP

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