The quake struck Baqen County in Nagqu city at 10.33 pm on Thursday at a shallow depth. The China Earthquake Networks Center put the depth at 10 kilometres; the US Geological Survey recorded 18 kilometres. The US agency placed the epicentre about 191 kilometres east-northeast of Nagqu, in a sparsely populated area where the average elevation within five kilometres of the epicentre is about 4,864 metres, and reported at least seven aftershocks between magnitudes 4.3 and 5.2.
Casualty figures have varied as reports come in from the affected area. State news agency Xinhua, citing Nagqu city's emergency management bureau, said early on Friday that 16 people had died and 32 were injured, 11 of them seriously. Broadcaster CCTV later cited local officials putting the injured at 46, while the Associated Press, citing the Nagqu media office, reported 54 injured. At least 339 homes and 20 livestock sheds collapsed, local officials said.
Authorities activated a Level-II earthquake emergency response. Xi Jinping called for all-out efforts in rescue operations and medical relief work. The Xizang Fire and Rescue Corps has deployed 347 personnel, 82 vehicles, 15 search-and-rescue dogs and more than 4,200 pieces of equipment, and an advance team of eight rescuers has pulled one trapped survivor from the rubble. More than 1,600 people from the local county have been mobilised, with police and firefighters erecting tents for displaced residents. Supplies including 1,000 prefabricated housing units, about 3,000 tents and folding beds, torches and winter clothing have reached the region.
Power and communication lines are down in parts of the affected area. Rockfalls have forced the closure of a section of national highway 317, open only to emergency and support vehicles, and railway authorities have halted trains passing through the region. Intermittent snow is expected over the next three days.
Video posted by CCTV showed workers running out of restaurants and objects falling from supermarket shelves as the tremor struck, and one resident reported being woken by the quake and hearing the house squeak. Tremors were felt in the cities of Qamdo and Nyingchi. Social media videos of villagers fleeing into the streets have not been independently verified.
The earthquake is the strongest to hit China since January 2024 and the biggest in the region in five years, state media said. Earthquakes are relatively common in the mountainous west of China: a quake in Tibet's rural Tingri county in January 2025 killed at least 126 people, a 6.2-magnitude tremor in Gansu province in 2023 killed more than 120, and the 2008 Sichuan earthquake left about 90,000 people dead or missing. Tibet and Nepal were also struck less than two months ago by floods and landslides unleashed by a glacier collapse that killed at least 1,400 people.