BEIJING, July 28 (Reuters) – A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck remote Xinghai county in the northwestern Chinese province of Qinghai on Tuesday at 11:16 a.m. (0316 GMT), with a second quake of magnitude 5.8 following 18 minutes later, the China Earthquake Networks Centre said.
Additional tremors, with one of magnitude 5.0, shook the region later in the afternoon, it said.
The quakes had a focal depth of 10 km (6.2 miles), with the epicentre located in a sparsely populated, high-altitude area about 244 km (152 miles) from Xining, the capital of Qinghai. Noticeable tremors were felt in Xining, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
Authorities have not yet received any reports of casualties, but some buildings and roads in at least seven nearby villages have been damaged to varying degrees, Xinhua said citing preliminary checks by local authorities.
Emergency response teams were already en route to the remote epicentre, and the tremors had also triggered limited landslides on nearby mountainsides, state media reported earlier.
(Reporting by Ethan Wang, Xiuhao Chen and Ryan Woo; Editing by Christopher Cushing and Kate Mayberry)
