Magnitude 6.6 earthquake strikes China’s Qinghai Province

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Strong 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes China’s Qinghai Province (representative)

Beijing:

A strong earthquake with a magnitude of 6.6 jolted the remote northwest China’s Qinghai Province early Saturday, the US Geological Survey said.

US seismologists said that the epicenter of the quake, which occurred at about 1:45 am (1745 GMT) at a shallow depth of 10 km (six miles), was 140 km northwest of Xining.

The USGS said a 5.1 aftershock followed about 25 minutes later.

The China Earthquake Networks Center estimated the earthquake’s strength at 6.9, according to the Xinhua News Agency.

“There is little potential for casualties,” the US Geological Survey said in its assessment of the quake, adding that nonetheless there was a potential for “significant damage.”

And the US agency warned that “the residents in this area reside in buildings that are highly vulnerable to the earthquake, despite the presence of some resistant structures.”

The sparsely populated province is scattered across the Tibetan Plateau.

In 2010, a 6.9-magnitude earthquake in Qinghai left 3,000 people dead or missing.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by the NDTV crew and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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