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60 killed in Kyrgyzstan earthquake
Bishkek—A strong earthquake hit Kyrg yzstan
close to the country’s border with China, killing 60 people and
setting off a race to help a remote village where victims were
concentrated, officials said Monday.
The quake late Sunday measured a magnitude 6.6, according to the US
Geogolical Survey (USGS) and destruction was concentrated on Alaisky
district on the the mountainous border. At least one big aftershock
was also reported.
“According to preliminary figures, 60 people died and more than 100
local residents were injured to various degrees,” Kyrgyz Emergency
Situations Minister Kamchybek Tashiyev told journalists.
The ministry said 120 houses had been flattened in the quake, which
hit the Alaisky district of southern Kyrgyzstan late Sunday evening.
Destruction was concentrated in Nura, a village of some 960 people
on the border with China. “The picture we saw was frightening. The
village of Nura is fully destroyed, 100 percent, there are many
injured,” Tashiyev said.
The quake struck at 9:52 pm (1552 GMT), the USGS said but Kyrgyz
officials described how rescue efforts were being hampered by the
remoteness of the village. There were no telephone links with Nura.
“Efforts to assist the victims are being complicated by the distance
of the villages... from hospitals, by a lack of communications and
by the destruction of the roads,” said health ministry official
Dinara Sagynbayeva.
USGS said the quake epicentre was 60 kilometres southeast of
Sary-Tash at a depth of 27 kilometres. An aftershock of magnitude
5.1 hit the region just over two hours later, USGS said.
Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked and mountainous nation of five million
people, is one of the poorest states of the former Soviet Union and
lies in a seismically active region. In February 2003, a 6.8
magnitude earthquake in northwest China, with an epicenter close to
Kyrgyzstan in the foothills of the Tianshan Mountains, claimed 268
lives and razed 20,000 houses.—AFP
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