Rescue teams search for survivors after Tibet earthquake

This was a powerful magnitude 7 earthquake which struck a remote part of northeastern Tibet late on Thursday evening about 10.30pm in the affected county known as Baqing County. Some have died, dozens of people have been injured and the government says at least 339 homes have either been destroyed or damaged. Now Beijing says that they have deployed 1,600 rescue personnel but it isn't easy reaching this area it's about 400 kilometers away from the provincial capital of lhasa and this is high in the mountains of an altitude about 4 800 meters and to make matters worse many of the roads leading to that area have been affected or blocked by rock fall communications remain down or shaky and snow is forecast over the next few days and hours we also know that this region though is no stranger to earthquakes it's where the indian and eurasian tectonic plates meet there was a deadly earthquake that struck tibet last january where 126 people were killed now what authorities are concerned by is that this latest earthquake had quite a shallow depth about 10 kilometers which means it was able to produce very destructive shaking on the surface but the authorities also say that it is quite a sparsely populated area so that may attribute to the so far relatively low death toll but we are expecting that to rise over the next few hours and days.