Six dead as 6.4 earthquake hits China''s Xinjiang

Beijing, July 3

Six people were killed and 48 others injured when a 6.5-magnitude earthquake jolted China's northwestern Xinjiang province today, authorities said.

The earthquake hit Xinjiang's Hotan Prefecture, the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC) said. The tremor rocked Pishan County at 9:07 am with its epicentre monitored at a depth of 10 kms, the CENC said.

Six people had been killed and about 3,000 houses and other buildings collapsed or were damaged, the Bureau of Civil Affairs in Xinjiang said.

48 people were injured in the earthquake, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

Following this, the local administration issued a level-II emergency response to the quake.

Li Hua, a worker at a state-owned farm in Pishan, told Xinhua that he felt the strong quake at his home on the fourth floor and it lasted about a minute.

"I'm feeling dizzy," he said.

Shortly after the quake, several minor quakes measuring between 3.0 and 4.6 magnitude rocked the area, according to the CENC.

Located in the southernmost part of Xinjiang, Pishan is about 1,800 kilometres away from the regional capital of Urumqi and covers 39,700 square kilometres.

With a population of 258,000, the county is mainly inhabited by Uygur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. —PTI