BEIJING — The number of people injured in a magnitude 7 earthquake that struck the southwestern region of China's Tibet has risen to 65, the local government said in a social media post on Friday, while the death toll remained unchanged at 16.

The quake, whose epicenter was located in Nagqu, a sparsely populated, high-altitude city in northern Tibet, is the strongest to hit China since January 2024, when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Wushi County in China's far western Xinjiang region. The Tibetan plateau is among the world's most seismically active zones, lying where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide.

More than 300 police officers, including traffic and community police personnel, were dispatched to the epicenter to carry out rescue and emergency relief work, the Nagqu police department said in a separate post on the messaging app WeChat early on Friday. According to the same post, officers checked homes for damage and helped residents move to safer locations.

A video published by the police on Douyin, the Chinese sister app of TikTok, showed officers packing supplies into a truck in the dark and inspecting a building and rubble with flashlights.

More than 12,000 people have been safely relocated, state media outlet Xinhua reported. Footage previously released by local official media showed residents leaving their homes to shelter outside or in cars parked along the street. One resident said they were awakened by the strong quake and heard the house squeaking during the tremor.

The China Earthquake Networks Center said in a post that 413 aftershocks had been recorded, a tally that monitoring agencies continue to update in the hours and days after a major quake.

In 2010, a magnitude 7.1 tremor struck Yushu in neighboring Qinghai province, killing at least 2,698 people and leaving nearly 300 missing.

— Reuters