Tibet hit by two powerful aftershocks of last week’s earthquake

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BEIJING (Reuters) – A rural county in the Chinese region of Tibet, still feeling tremors from last week’s magnitude 6.8 earthquake, was jolted on Monday night by two powerful aftershocks barely a minute apart.

A magnitude 4.9 quake struck Tingri county at 8:57 p.m. local time (1257 GMT), according to China Earthquake Networks Center. That was followed by a magnitude 5.0 aftershock a minute later whose epicentre was just 9km from last week’s quake.

There were no immediate reports of casualties, Chinese state media said, following the magnitude 5.0 aftershock, which struck at a very shallow depth of 10km.

The Jan. 7 earthquake, the fifth-strongest in China since the destructive 2008 Sichuan temblor, left at least 126 people dead and injured 338 in Tibet.

More than 47,000 people in Tingri had to be swiftly resettled in tents and prefab houses, in a high-altitude environment where nighttime temperatures in winter plunge to as low as minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).

Southwestern parts of China, Nepal and northern India are often hit by earthquakes caused by the collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Tingri, which sits atop the zone where the Indian plate pushes under Tibet, is particularly vulnerable.

(Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Alison Williams and Toby Chopra)