China orders 'all-out' rescue after quake kills 16 in Tibet region

China ordered an "all-out" rescue effort in a remote area of Tibet on Friday after an earthquake killed at least 16 people and injured dozens more, state media reported.

Footage showed rescue workers clambering in the dark through some of the 339 houses that Xinhua said collapsed or were damaged in Thursday evening's 7.0-magnitude quake.

Diners ran out of restaurants and items fell off wobbling supermarket shelves as the tremor struck, footage on state broadcaster CCTV showed.

Xinhua said that 76 people were injured, 11 of them seriously, and that over 12,000 residents were evacuated following the tremor at 10:33 pm (1433 GMT).

Hundreds of rescue workers and police were deployed, as well as sniffer dogs and equipment, to locate people under the rubble, CCTV said. More than 300 soldiers were also mobilised.

The epicentre was in Baqing county, an thinly populated area over 4,500 metres (14,800 feet) above sea level and at least a 10-hour drive from regional capital Lhasa, state media said.

One resident told local media that her family had just gone to bed when her home shook, knocking over objects, and that they "rushed outside without even taking the time to get dressed."

"My legs were shaking the entire time I was heading downstairs, and by the time I reached the bottom, I was so terrified that I burst into tears," the woman said.

Local residents "are afraid to return to their homes", she said. "They set up tents along the roadside or spent the night in their cars."

A man told the Beijing News that the "very strong" quake left his home "creaking and rattling."

"I was asleep when it hit. Everyone has run outside now and is too afraid to go back in. I'm currently driving to an open area to sleep in my car," he said.

Broadcaster CCTV also showed emergency personnel with helmets carrying a person and shining flashlights on damaged buildings, some with collapsed roofs.

Tibet is largely inaccessible to foreign journalists and Chinese authorities are the only source of official information.

President Xi Jinping said the tremor caused "significant casualties" and took place at a "high-altitude location" in cold weather.

"(We) must go all-out to carry out search and rescue operations and do our utmost to treat the injured, so as to minimise casualties," Xinhua quoted Xi as saying.

Earthquakes in China are relatively common.

In January 2025, a quake in Tibet's rural Tingri county killed at least 126 people.

The disaster came little over a year after at least 148 people died in a quake in remote Gansu province in northwest China in December 2023, according to state media.

That quake was China's deadliest since 2014, when more than 600 people perished in the southwestern province of Yunnan.

A massive tremor in 2008 in Sichuan province left about 90,000 people dead or missing, including thousands of schoolchildren.

On August 26, Tibet was struck by an avalanche of ice and rock and a massive flood, which officially left 43 people dead on the Chinese side and at least 1,400 dead in Nepal.

Agence France-Presse