A strong earthquake shook part of southwestern China on Monday afternoon. It wasn’t immediately clear if there was damage.
The 6.8-magnitude earthquake jolted Luding county in Sichuan province at 12:52pm (local time), Xinhua news agency reported.
The 6.6-magnitude quake was centred at a depth of 10 kilometres, according to the US Geological Survey. Preliminary measurements by different agencies often differ slightly. Shallower quakes tend to cause more damage.
Sichuan, which sits on the edge of the Tibetan plateau where tectonic plates meet, is regularly hit by earthquakes. Two quakes in June killed at least four people.
China’s deadliest earthquake in recent years was a 7.9-magnitude quake in 2008 that killed nearly 90,000 people in Sichuan. The tremor devastated towns, schools and rural communities outside the provincial capital of Chengdu, leading to a years-long effort to rebuild with more resistant materials.
The epicentre of the most recent quake is in a mountainous area about 200 kilometres southwest of Chengdu.
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