NEPAL — A powerful earthquake struck Nepal on Tuesday less than three weeks after a quake devastated large areas of the Himalayan nation.
The magnitude 7.3 earthquake Tuesday was centered in a remote area of eastern Nepal, near the border with China. It took place at a depth of about 18.5 kilometers (11.5 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said. It had initially estimated the magnitude at 7.4.
It shook a country still picking up the pieces from the magnitude 7.8 quake that hit on April 25, killing more than 8,000 people.
The epicenter of new earthquake was about 83 kilometers east of Kathmandu, the Nepali capital where many buildings were destroyed in the earlier quake.
“All the people are on the streets,” said Phurba Sherpa, a freelance journalist in Kathmandu. He said the quake felt “very big.”
Manesh Shrestha, a CNN producer, was with a group of people helping to clear debris in a town outside Kathmandu when the new quake struck.
He said it caused three or four damaged houses to start to collapse.
Tuesday’s earthquake struck about 70 kilometers from Mount Everest, where the April quake set off deadly avalanches.
The tremors were felt across the region, including in the Indian capital of New Delhi.
Jack Board, a reporter at Channel NewsAsia, filmed chaotic scenes at Kathmandu Airport of hundreds of people running from the building as the ground shook.
CNN’s Pamela Boykoff, Bex Wright, Hilary Whiteman and Sumnima Udas contributed to this report.
