Photo: Croquant / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
At least 16 people have died and 46 have been injured after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake hit Baqen County in the Nagqu region of Tibet late on Thursday, according to local authorities. The quake struck at 10:33 pm Beijing time (8:03 pm IST) at a shallow depth of about 10 km, with its epicentre in Maru township, roughly 400 km north-east of the regional capital, Lhasa.
Hundreds of homes damaged
By 5:20 am on Friday, the Nagqu earthquake relief headquarters said 11 of the injured were in serious condition and 35 had minor injuries. Houses belonging to 339 households had collapsed or been damaged, along with 20 livestock sheds. Officials stressed that the figures were preliminary and that damage was still being assessed.
A deputy head of Maru township told the state news agency Xinhua that the shaking was clearly felt at the township office, whose walls cracked. Power and telephone services in the county seat were knocked out, and strong tremors were also reported in Qamdo and Nyingchi, farther south-east in Tibet.
Rescue effort and supplies
Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered an all-out rescue effort, state media reported. More than 300 police officers and 347 fire and rescue personnel were sent to the epicentre overnight, and over 1,600 people from the local county have been put to work on search and rescue, officials said.
Relief material has started arriving, including about 1,000 prefabricated housing units, around 3,000 tents and folding beds, flashlights and winter clothing. Rockfalls triggered by the quake have forced authorities to close a section of National Highway 317, with only emergency, rescue and official vehicles allowed through while crews clear debris.
Strongest quake in China this year
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV described it as the biggest earthquake in the region in five years, and state media said it was the strongest to hit China so far in 2026. India’s National Center for Seismology recorded a string of aftershocks in Tibet through the night, several of them between magnitude 4.3 and 4.8.
The region is prone to strong earthquakes, and it is still recovering from floods and landslides less than two months ago, set off by a glacier collapse, that killed at least 1,400 people across Tibet and Nepal.
What happens next
Search teams are working through remote, high-altitude villages, and officials have warned that the casualty count could change as verification continues. With foreign media access to Tibet tightly restricted, Chinese state media remain the main source of information on the scale of the damage.
