The death toll from the “Chinese disaster” has risen to 148
The death toll from the earthquake that struck China has risen to 148, according to official media reports, while authorities focus on resettling thousands of displaced individuals.
The earthquake, which occurred just before midnight on Monday, struck about 1300 kilometers southwest of Beijing. It resulted in the death of at least 117 people in Gansu Province and 31 in the neighboring Qinghai Province, according to China’s official news agency Xinhua.
In the bitter cold, more than 139,000 people in these provinces have been accommodated in emergency shelters, as reported by the government television channel, which mentioned that relief efforts in Gansu are “now fully focusing on resettling the displaced and caring for the injured.”
Meanwhile, rescue teams continue on Friday morning to search for victims trapped under the rubble in Qinghai Province, where people were buried alive on Tuesday in Chongqing due to a “sand volcano,” a phenomenon in which the soil flows under the influence of an earthquake.
Nearly a thousand people were injured in the earthquake, which had a magnitude of 5.9, according to the US Geological Survey. Dozens of aftershocks have been recorded since then.
This earthquake has resulted in the highest death toll in China since 2014 when more than 600 people lost their lives in Yunnan Province in the southwest of the country.
