Key events
As well as Kathmandu, areas around Lobuche in Nepal in the high mountains near Everest were also rattled by the tremor and aftershocks, AFP reported.
“It shook quite strongly here, everyone is awake,” said government official Jagat Prasad Bhusal in Nepal’s Namche region, which lies nearer to Everest.
But no damage or deaths had been reported so far and security forces had been deployed, Nepali home minister spokesman Rishi Ram Tiwari said.
Nepal lies on a major geological faultline where the Indian tectonic plate pushes up into the Eurasian plate, forming the Himalayas, and earthquakes are a regular occurrence.
In 2015, nearly 9,000 people died and more than 22,000 were injured when a 7.8-magnitude quake struck Nepal, destroying more than half a million homes.
Pictures are starting to trickle in from the areas affected by the earthquake, although they’re still few and far between. Here are a couple from Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, where tremors sent people out onto the streets:
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the earthquake in Tibet.
The quake struck near one of Tibet’s holiest cities, the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC) has said, killing at least 53 people and collapsing “many buildings” with tremors also felt in neighbouring Nepal’s capital Kathmandu and parts of India.
The quake struck Dingri county with a magnitude of 6.8 near the border with Nepal on Tuesday morning, according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC). The US Geological Survey reported the tremor as magnitude 7.1.
“Fifty-three people have been confirmed dead, and 62 others injured as of Tuesday noon, after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted Dingri County in the city of Xigaze in Xizang (Tibet) Autonomous Region at 9:05 am Tuesday,” the official Xinhua news agency said.
Videos published by China’s state broadcaster CCTV showed destroyed houses with walls torn apart and rubble strewn across the ruins in the aftermath of the earthquake.
Temperatures in Dingri are around minus 8 degrees Celsius and will drop to minus 18 this evening, according to the China Meteorological Administration, AFP reported.
The high-altitude county in the Tibet region is home to about 62,000 people and situated on the Chinese side of Mount Everest.
While earthquakes are common in the region, Tuesday’s quake was the most powerful recorded within a 200-kilometre radius in the last five years, the CENC added.
Stay with us as we cover the developments.