6.7 Earthquake Hits Remote Area of Southwestern China

A strong earthquake, registering a magnitude of 6.7, jolted a remote area of southwestern China early today, the official New China News Agency reported.

There was no immediate report of casualties.

A spokesman for the State Seismological Bureau said the quake struck at 5:34 a.m. local time and was centered near Batang, a town on an upper tributary of the Yangtze River in western Sichuan province near the border with Tibet.

He said that “most of the buildings have cracks in the walls. A small number of badly built structures have collapsed.”

“It’s a very sparsely populated area,” the spokesman said, adding that the remoteness of the area made a large casualty toll unlikely.

The spokesman said that communications to the area were disrupted.

The New China News Agency said the quake was felt as far away as Litang, a town about 70 miles to the east.

Nearly 300 aftershocks were recorded later in the day, with the largest registering a magnitude of 4.0.

Last November, a tremor measuring 7.6, 10 times more powerful than Sunday’s quake, killed 730 people and injured more than 4,000 in Yunnan province, south of Sichuan. It was China’s worst earthquake in a decade.