A magnitude 6.6 Earthquake struck China’s Western Sichuan on Monday, the strongest to hit the region since 2017, killing at least seven people and shaking the provincial capital of Chengdu and other provinces.
Some roads and homes near the epicentre were damaged by landslides, while communications were down in at least one area, according to state television. No damage at dam and hydropower stations within 50 km (31 miles) of the epicentre has been reported.
The epicentre was at Luding, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said, a town in the mountains about 226 km southwest of Chengdu.
Earthquakes are common in Sichuan, a southwestern province, especially in its mountains in the west, a tectonically active area along the eastern boundary of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau.
In Luding, the quake was so strong it was hard for some people to remain standing, while cracks appeared on some houses, according to state media China News Service.
A total of 39,000 people live within 20 km of the epicentre and 1.55 million within 100 km, according to state television.
The quake was Sichuan’s biggest since August 2017, when one of magnitude 7.0 hit Aba prefecture.
The most powerful Sichuan earthquake on record was in May 2008, when a magnitude 8.0 quake centred in Wenchuan killed almost 70,000 people and caused extensive damage.
