Magnitude 7.0 quake in Tibet's Nagqu kills 16 as Beijing orders all-out rescue

China ordered an all-out search and rescue effort on Friday after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck a remote stretch of the Tibet Autonomous Region late Thursday, killing at least 16 people and injuring 65, according to figures from Chinese state media and local authorities released on Friday and carried by Dawn and TRT World.

The quake hit at 10:33 p.m. local time in Baqen County, also spelled Baqing, in Nagqu City, a high-altitude prefecture in northern Tibet. The U.S. Geological Survey put its depth at about 10 kilometers, a shallow focus that tends to intensify shaking at the surface. The agency placed the epicenter in mountainous terrain roughly 190 kilometers east-northeast of Nagqu and 390 kilometers northeast of the regional capital, Lhasa, Dawn reported.

More than 300 houses collapsed, the official Xinhua news agency reported, and over 12,000 people were relocated, according to TRT World. Residents described spending the night in tents or cars instead of going back indoors. "I was asleep when it hit. Everyone has run outside now and is too afraid to go back in," one man told the Beijing News, Dawn reported.

Beijing raises its emergency response

President Xi Jinping said rescuers "must go all-out to carry out search and rescue operations," Xinhua reported. Xi pointed to "significant casualties" and the quake's "high-altitude location," and he called for prompt treatment of the injured and fast delivery of relief goods and rescue equipment. China lifted its national earthquake emergency response from Level IV to Level III, TRT World reported.

The National Fire and Rescue Force sent 350 rescuers and 83 vehicles toward the area; by 6:30 a.m. Friday Beijing time, 120 rescuers and 27 vehicles had arrived, according to TRT World. The Nagqu police department dispatched more than 300 officers to the epicenter. Dawn reported that more than 1,600 people had been mobilized inside Baqen County, joined by 225 Armed Police officers and soldiers with 18 vehicles.

Authorities had moved 1,000 prefabricated housing units and 3,239 tents into the quake zone by early Friday, along with 2,821 folding beds and 4,280 quilts, TRT World reported. Dawn listed four generators and 1,000 flashlights among the first relief shipments. The China Earthquake Networks Center had logged 413 aftershocks, TRT World reported.

Loss estimates and regional reaction

The USGS issued a yellow alert for fatalities and an orange alert for economic losses. "Estimated economic losses are less than 1 percent of GDP of China," the agency said, as quoted by TRT World. In Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari "expressed deep sorrow over the loss of lives," according to a statement, while Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said his government was "ready to extend every possible support" to China, Dawn reported.

The disaster adds to a long record of deadly tremors in western China, where the plateau is shaped by the continuing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. A January 2025 quake in Tibet's Tingri County killed 126 people, and a December 2023 quake in Gansu province killed 148, Dawn noted. The magnitude 7.1 Yushu earthquake in neighboring Qinghai province in 2010 killed at least 2,698 people and left about 300 missing, TRT World reported, and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake left about 90,000 people dead or missing.

What it means: The Nagqu quake tests Beijing's disaster machinery in one of its most remote and politically sensitive regions, where altitude, cold and long road distances slow every convoy. The quick move to a Level III response and the steady release of figures on rescuers, tents and vehicles show Beijing wants the relief effort seen as fast and centrally directed. The toll reported as of Friday is far below that of Yushu or Sichuan, and the USGS loss estimate points to a limited national economic hit. The harder task now is sheltering more than 12,000 displaced people on the high plateau as winter sets in, while hundreds of aftershocks keep residents out of their homes.