A powerful magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck a remote, high-altitude area of northern Tibet late on Thursday night, collapsing houses, cutting power and communications, and prompting a major emergency response, Chinese state media reported. The quake hit Baqen County in Nagqu at 10:33 p.m. local time (1433 GMT), according to the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC), and was recorded at a shallow depth of 10 kilometres — the kind of depth that tends to produce the strongest shaking at the surface.
State news agency Xinhua, citing Nagqu City’s emergency management bureau, said the earthquake killed at least 16 people and injured 32 others — 11 seriously and 21 with minor injuries. At least 339 homes collapsed in the area, according to the Nagqu media office.
What happened
Both CENC and the US Geological Survey (USGS) put the earthquake at magnitude 7.0, making it one of the strongest to hit China in more than two years. The USGS, which designated the event us6000u43g, located the epicentre about 190 kilometres east-northeast of Nagqu city and roughly 400 kilometres northeast of the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, near the border with Qinghai Province. The two agencies differ slightly on depth: CENC measured 10 kilometres, while the USGS calculated 18 kilometres.
The epicentre sat in Maru Township, in a sparsely populated stretch of the Tibetan Plateau where the average elevation within five kilometres of the epicentre is about 4,864 metres, according to CENC data. The USGS estimated maximum shaking intensity at MMI VIII — “severe” on the Modified Mercalli scale — and estimated that around 111,000 people experienced moderate-to-severe shaking. It issued an orange alert for economic losses, indicating significant damage is likely. A magnitude 5.2 aftershock followed about 40 minutes later, and seismologists say further aftershocks are likely in the coming days. Because the epicentre is deep inland, there is no tsunami threat.
Damage and casualties
The clearest early picture of damage comes from Maru Township, closest to the epicentre. Xinhua reported that at least 339 houses collapsed in the area and that the township government office sustained cracks in its walls. The township’s deputy head, Lhawang Dagpo, told the agency the shaking was clearly felt at the office. Power and telecommunications services were disrupted in the county seat, complicating efforts to establish contact with outlying settlements.
Rockfalls triggered by the quake damaged a car and guardrails and blocked a section of National Highway 317, a key road route across the plateau, according to Chinese reporting. Officials cautioned that the full extent of the damage remains unknown: the affected area is mountainous, settlements are scattered, and the quake struck late at night, when most residents were indoors — a factor that can raise the risk from collapsing rural homes, many of them built from adobe block and unreinforced brick.
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Rescue response
China’s Earthquake Administration activated a Level-II emergency response, the second-highest tier, Xinhua reported. An initial deployment of around 80 rescuers was sent to check three counties around the epicentre, and fire and rescue teams, along with government working groups, were dispatched to coordinate the response and guide relief work on the ground.
Local officials fanned out to inspect nearby villages house by house, a process expected to take time given the altitude, the distances involved and the loss of power and phone services in the county seat. Authorities said assessments were continuing and that updated casualty and damage figures would be released as checks are completed. This is a developing story and will be updated as official information emerges.
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Regional context
Tibet sits on one of the most seismically active zones on Earth, where the Indian tectonic plate continues to push into the Eurasian plate — the collision that built the Himalayas and the Tibetan Plateau. The USGS said Thursday’s quake resulted from normal faulting linked to the slow east–west stretching of the plateau’s crust, and estimated the rupture at roughly 50 kilometres long by 20 kilometres wide.
The region’s vulnerability was underlined in January 2025, when a powerful earthquake in Tingri County, near the Nepal border, killed at least 126 people and destroyed thousands of homes. The largest instrumentally recorded event in the wider region remains the 1950 Assam–Tibet earthquake, measured at magnitude 8.6. Thursday’s quake, while centred in a far more remote area than the 2025 disaster, is a reminder that strong earthquakes can strike anywhere along the plateau with little warning.
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Sources: US Geological Survey (event us6000u43g) — https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us6000u43g · Xinhua via Gulf News — https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/casualties-reported-after-70-quake-strikes-chinas-tibet-state-media-1.500720247 · The Hindu — https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/tibet-earthquake-nagqu-updates-october-22-2026/article71612585.ece · Associated Press — https://www.reflector.com/news/national/a-magnitude-7-earthquake-shakes-chinas-tibet/article_0794d8e3-386a-58df-a417-9408359bc464.html · Reuters reporting via HeyDay News — https://heyday.news/articles/tibet-magnitude-seven-earthquake-baqen-emergency-response-05e5414f
This story was updated after officials released the casualty figures.
