Quake in west China kills at least 94 people

A powerful earthquake struck China’s remote west today, killing at least 94 people and collapsing houses, a disaster official said.

The quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale struck an area of the Xinjiang region near China’s mountainous border with Kyrgyzstan at 10.03am (2.03am Irish time), according to officials.

“The death toll might increase,” said Zhang Yong, director of disaster prevention for the Xinjiang Seismology Bureau. He spoke by telephone from the region’s capital, Urumqi.

The area is about 1,750 miles west of Beijing.

More than 1,000 houses and school buildings collapsed in one village in Bachu County, where the earthquake was centred, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

The US Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado, reported the quake’s magnitude as 6.3 and said its centre lay some 20 miles below the surface.

Earthquakes are common in Xinjiang, especially in its west. But they usually cause little damage because the area is so sparsely populated.