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Explainer | Here’s what you need to know about deadly earthquakes in China’s Sichuan province
- Southwestern region is part of earthquake-prone zone that sits atop a major fault line
- Monday’s 6.8-magnitude quake has already claimed 66 lives, with serious economic loss also forecast
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A 6.8-magnitude earthquake hit China’s southwestern Sichuan province on Monday, leaving at least 66 people dead. Another 250 were injured and 15 still missing as of Tuesday evening, with more than 11,000 people evacuated to safer places.
The epicentre of the quake was in Luding, a small town of some 80,000 in Ganzi prefecture. Lying along the eastern boundary of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, the mountainous region is quake-prone as it sits atop a major seismic fault line.
Major Sichuan earthquakes in recent times included the magnitude 8.0 disaster centred in Wenchuan in 2008, which killed hundreds of thousands and flattened entire villages, as well as two deadly magnitude 7.0 quakes, in 2013 and 2017.
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Here is what you need to know about the latest Sichuan earthquake.
Is an even stronger jolt on the way?
Several moderate aftershocks followed the main quake that hit at 12.52pm on Monday, with more than a dozen counted by authorities as of Tuesday, with the largest of 4.2 magnitude.
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