Killer Quake Hits Western China

A powerful earthquake has leveled remote towns in northwestern China, killing at least 24 people - most of them young children - and leaving 10,000 homeless.

The magnitude 6.9 earthquake late Tuesday struck settlements along the centuries-old trade route known as the Silk Road in China’s Xinjiang region.

The quake and 68 aftershocks of up to magnitude 5.1 caused 50,000 buildings to collapse and cracked a dike, government seismologists said Wednesday. At least 78 people were injured, nine of them seriously.

Casualty reports, however, were incomplete due to disrupted communications with the hardest hit area, Jiashi county. By late Wednesday afternoon, only one village in the county had reported in.

Jiashi is about 43 miles east of Kashgar, an ancient bazaar town. The earthquake was centered close to Artux, 15 miles north of Kashgar.

Many people were at home when the quake struck at 11 p.m. (10 a.m. EST).

Seventeen of those killed were children under the age of eight, said Bake Aji, director of the Kashgar Seismology Bureau. “They were home watching television and couldn’t get out fast enough,” Bake said.

Most houses in the region are one-story dwellings made of baked mud bricks and topped by wooden beams and mud that could cause heavy casualties if they collapsed.