It was 9 am (2 am in France) on Tuesday, January 7, when the earth shook in Dingri, a rural county in southern Tibet, an autonomous region in southwestern China. Under the power of the magnitude 6.8 quake, according to China's national earthquake agency (7.1 according to the United States Geological Survey), the walls of houses collapsed, killing at least 126 people and injuring 188, according to the latest death toll released by the official Xinhua News Agency at 7 pm on Tuesday. It also added that 6,900 people had been living within 20 kilometers of the quake's epicenter.

On Wednesday morning, thousands of rescue workers and soldiers were still busy trying to pull people out of the rubble. Yet the temperatures, which range from -8ºC during the day to -18ºC at night, in these areas of the Himalayan foothills, situated at an altitude of 4,200 meters, some 75 kilometers from Mount Everest, leave little hope of finding survivors. Several aftershocks were recorded in the hours that followed the quake.

According to images broadcast by the national television channel CCTV and social media, the area's small white houses, which are common in the Chinese countryside, had been reduced to piles of bricks, cinder blocks, or even stones, for the oldest among them. Some showed bodies trapped under the rubble, as rescuers in orange uniforms were busy working. Others showed dead livestock, and residents crying out in horror at the ruins. On Tuesday, China's president, Xi Jinping, called for "every effort to be made to carry out search and rescue operations and to treat the injured," according to CCTV. "Everything must be done to minimize the loss of life" and "relocate those affected," he added.

You have 64.93% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.