At least 111 people were killed in a magnitude 6.2 earthquake in a mountainous region in northwestern China, The Associated Press reported, citing the country’s state media.
The official Xinhua news agency said that 100 people died in the province of Gansu and another 11 in the neighboring province of Qinghai in the quake, which occurred just before midnight (local time) on Monday.
More than 200 people were injured, Xinhua said, 96 in Gansu and 124 in Qinghai. The quake struck in Gansu’s Jishishan county, about 5 kilometers from the provincial boundary with Qinghai.
The US Geological Survey initially put the quake’s magnitude at 5.9 before Chinese authorities gave it a slightly higher reading of 6.2.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that there was damage to water and electricity lines, as well as transportation and communications infrastructure.
The earthquake was felt in Lanzhou, the Gansu provincial capital, about 1,450 kilometers southwest of the capital of Beijing, according to AP.
Last year in September, at least 74 people were reported killed in a 6.8 magnitude earthquake that shook China’s southwestern province of Sichuan, triggering landslides and shaking buildings in the provincial capital of Chengdu, where 21 million residents were under a COVID-19 lockdown.
China’s deadliest earthquake in recent years was a 7.9 magnitude quake in 2008 that killed nearly 90,000 people in Sichuan.