The president of China, Xi Jinping, has urged this Friday to deploy "all possible efforts" in the search and rescue tasks after the earthquake of magnitude 7 on the Richter scale that shook the Tibet region on Thursday, where 16 people have died and another 76 have been injured.
In his instructions, he has demanded to activate without delay all necessary measures to "minimize the number of victims" and has emphasized the need to "closely monitor seismic activity and weather conditions to prevent secondary disasters," according to the CGTN network.
Xi has reminded that the affected area is at high altitude and suffers from very low temperatures, so he has emphasized that "it is necessary to ensure adequate accommodation for the affected residents and repair the damaged infrastructure as quickly as possible to save the lives of the population."
At the same time, the prime minister, Li Qiang, has called for strengthening disaster prevention and response capacity, while personnel from the Ministry of Emergency Management have moved to the area to support operations.
Regional authorities have reported that more than 12,500 people have had to be evacuated. The earthquake, with its epicenter in Baqing County, has caused damage to hundreds of homes, although the complete assessment of the damages is still ongoing.