China earthquake: 22 injured in Yunnan Province

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Illustrative image. Image Credit: Shutterstock

BEIJING: Twenty-two people were injured when a shallow earthquake rocked southwest China on Sunday afternoon, local authorities said, shaking the popular tourist city of Lijiang.

The quake struck near the border between Yunnan and Sichuan provinces, according to the US Geological Survey, with a magnitude of 5.4 on the Richter scale and a depth of 38 km.

The Yunnan Seismological Bureau said 22 people were injured in the quake, two of them in critical condition, in Ninglang County.

The provincial seismological department said there were no reports so far of damage to homes, but the Xinhua News Agency said 60 search and rescue teams had been dispatched to the epicenter.

Later, the China Earthquake Networks Center measured the magnitude at 5.5 at a depth of 10 km.

The US Geological Survey said the quake’s epicenter was 115 kilometers from Lijiang in Yunnan Province.

China is regularly exposed to earthquakes, especially in the western and southwestern mountainous regions.

In September, three people were killed and dozens injured when a shallow earthquake hit Sichuan Province, damaging tens of thousands of homes.

A 7.9-magnitude earthquake in Sichuan in 2008 killed more than 80,000 people.

They included thousands of children who were killed when poorly constructed school buildings collapsed, but the government failed to release the exact death toll as the case took on a political dimension.

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