Magnitude 7.0 Earthquake Strikes Tibet: At Least 16 Dead, Hundreds of Homes Destroyed

NAGQU — A powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck China's remote Tibet region late on Thursday, killing at least 16 people, injuring 32 more and collapsing hundreds of homes in the high-altitude northern city of Nagqu, official media reported. Search-and-rescue teams worked through the night to reach isolated villages cut off by rockfalls as temperatures fell across the plateau.

China's national broadcaster CCTV called it the biggest earthquake to hit the region in five years. The US Geological Survey said the quake struck at 10:33 p.m. local time (1433 GMT), with its epicentre about 191 kilometres east-northeast of Nagqu in a sparsely populated, mountainous area of northern Tibet. The USGS put the depth at 18 kilometres; China's earthquake monitoring centre measured it at 10 kilometres.

Nagqu lies more than 300 kilometres north of Lhasa, the regional capital. The epicentre sat in Maru township in Baqen county, a rugged high-altitude district where houses of stone and mud brick stand little chance against strong shaking. Officials said at least 339 homes had collapsed, and the toll was expected to change as rescue workers reached outlying settlements.

Shallow quake strikes Baqen county

The shallow depth amplified the destruction. Xinhua news agency, citing local authorities, said the tremor levelled entire rows of houses across several villages and disrupted power and telecommunications in the Baqen county seat. Lhawang Dagpo, the deputy head of Maru township, told Xinhua the shaking was clearly felt inside the township office, where cracks split the walls.

Of the 32 injured, 11 were in serious condition and 21 sustained minor injuries, according to the Nagqu media office, citing city government officials. Police and fire department personnel fanned out across the district to pull survivors from rubble and erect tents for families whose homes had been destroyed. Disaster relief work was ongoing through the night.

The agency said rescue teams faced a race against time: remote Himalayan settlements, many hours from the nearest hospital, often bear the worst of such disasters because heavy machinery and medical teams take long to arrive. Every hour of delay in the thin, freezing air reduces the odds of finding survivors under collapsed roofs, according to official briefings tracked by News Plus Globe.

Rescuers battle cold, rockfalls and snow

More than 1,600 rescue personnel were deployed to the quake zone, and authorities dispatched emergency supplies including 1,000 prefabricated housing units, 3,000 tents, folding beds, flashlights and warm clothing, according to local reports. Sections of National Highway 317 were closed after rockfalls, with access restricted to emergency and rescue vehicles, while local rail services were suspended.

The earthquake disrupted transportation and communications across the district, and intermittent snowfall forecast for the coming days could complicate rescue and recovery operations further. Winter arrives early at 4,500 metres, and displaced families faced a bitter first night outdoors.

"Rescue teams are working around the clock and every effort is being made to save lives," officials said in a statement carried by state media. Local officials were conducting door-to-door checks in surrounding villages to account for missing residents.

Level-II emergency response activated

Authorities activated a level-II earthquake disaster emergency response — the second-highest tier in China's four-level system — and sent national-level work teams to the scene to coordinate the relief effort. The activation unlocks central government stockpiles of tents, blankets, medical supplies and rescue equipment, and places military engineering units on standby.

China's emergency management ministry has in recent years moved to pre-position relief materials in Tibet's far-flung counties, precisely because earthquakes there tend to strike far from paved roads. Whether those stockpiles reached Baqen quickly enough remained unclear in the first hours after the quake.

Seismologists note that the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates has made the Tibetan Plateau one of the most seismically active land areas on Earth. Earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater strike the plateau almost every year, and the combination of shallow epicentres, fragile rural housing and extreme remoteness has repeatedly turned moderate shocks into deadly ones. See live coverage of developing international stories on our live desk.

A region familiar with tragedy

Tibet has suffered devastating quakes within living memory. In January 2025, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Tingri county in southern Tibet, killing at least 126 people and flattening villages near the Nepal border. In 2010, a magnitude 7.1 tremor struck Yushu in neighbouring Qinghai province, killing at least 2,698 people with nearly 300 others missing.

The latest shock landed weeks after a separate catastrophe: flash floods and landslides devastated areas along the Nepal-China border on August 26, killing more than 1,400 people according to updated figures. That disaster had already stretched the region's relief machinery when Thursday's quake struck.

International disaster analysts say the pattern exposes a chronic vulnerability: rural communities across the Himalayas live in homes never engineered for strong shaking, and early-warning or building-code enforcement remains patchy outside major cities. Each new quake renews calls for retrofitting the stone and mud-brick houses that dominate the plateau's villages.

What happens next

Search-and-rescue operations will continue through the coming days as teams clear roads, restore communications and reach the most remote hamlets, officials said. A full damage assessment is expected once crews complete their village-by-village surveys, and the casualty toll may still rise.

For now, the immediate priority is shelter. With snow in the forecast and night temperatures plunging below freezing, getting tents, heaters and medical teams to displaced families is a matter of hours, not days. Chinese authorities said additional rescue and medical teams from neighbouring provinces were being mobilised.

The disaster drew condolences and offers of assistance from across Asia as the scale of the damage became clear. This developing story will be updated as rescue teams complete their surveys, with full coverage in our World News section.