Pope prays for victims of earthquake in China

By Joseph Tulloch and Linda Bordoni

At the end of his weekly General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis expressed his closeness to the victims of a deadly earthquake in China.

“I turn my thoughts”, he said, “to the victims and those injured in the devastating earthquake that struck the Chinese provinces of Gansu and Quinghai on Monday.”

“I am close with affection and prayer to the suffering people,” the Pope continued. “I encourage the emergency services, and invoke the blessing of the blessing of the Almighty upon all, so that He might bring comfort and relief in their sorrow.”

Death toll continues to rise

At least 130 have died in the magnitude 6.2 earthquake, which struck just before midnight on Monday.

As well as those killed and missing, more than 700 people were injured, roads were damaged and power and communication lines in Gansu and Qinghai provinces were knocked out.

As emergency workers searched the rubble for survivors, at least one landslide hindered operations, while those left homeless were forced to spend a cold winter night in tents at hastily erected evacuation sites.

The earthquake struck at a relatively shallow depth of 10 kilometres in Gansu’s Jishishan county, close to the provincial boundary with Qinghai.

There were nine aftershocks about 10 hours after the initial earthquake, and rescue authorities issued an appeal for 300 additional workers for search and rescue operations.

A quake-prone area

The death toll is the highest since an August 2014 quake that killed 617 people in southwest China's Yunnan province, but the country's deadliest earthquake in recent years was a 7.9 magnitude quake in 2008 that left nearly 90,000 dead or presumed dead and devastated towns and schools in Sichuan province. That tragedy led to an effort to rebuild with more resistant materials.

Geographically, the remote and mountainous area struck by the latest quake is in the centre of China, though the area is commonly referred to as the northwest, as it is at the northwestern edge of China’s more populated plains.

Earthquakes are somewhat common in the region, which rises to form the eastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau.