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A magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Baqen County in Nagqu, in northern Tibet, at 10:33pm local time on Thursday (14:33 GMT), the China Earthquake Networks Centre (CENC) said. The agency put the epicentre at 32.40 degrees north and 93.79 degrees east, at a depth of 10km.

The United States Geological Survey recorded the same magnitude but placed the depth at 18km and the epicentre about 191km east-northeast of Nagqu city. Such differences between agencies are common in the first hours after a large earthquake, before readings are reviewed.

At least two people were injured in a village near the epicentre, and houses in the villages closest to it showed cracks, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported. The full extent of the damage was not immediately known, and no death toll had been announced.

The area is sparsely populated and very high. CENC data put the average elevation within 5km of the epicentre at about 4,864 metres, or 15,960 feet. The epicentre was roughly 400km from Lhasa, the regional capital.

Videos released by local state media showed residents leaving their homes and taking shelter outside or in cars parked in the street. One resident said he was woken by the shaking and heard his house creaking. CENC said the quake was clearly felt in the surrounding area.

Local fire and rescue teams were mobilised and were heading towards the affected region, state media said. Several smaller tremors of about magnitude 3 to 4 were recorded in nearby areas after the main quake, according to CENC data.

Reuters described the earthquake as the strongest to hit China since January 2024.

The Tibetan Plateau lies where the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates collide, a collision that continues to lift the Himalayas and makes the region prone to powerful earthquakes. In 2010, a magnitude 7.1 tremor struck Yushu, about 280km away in neighbouring Qinghai province, killing at least 2,698 people and leaving nearly 300 missing. The toll in that disaster reflected how and where people lived as much as the size of the quake.

Northern Tibet's villages are scattered across grazing land, which can limit the number of people exposed to a single collapse. But the same conditions make rescue harder: the altitude is punishing for teams arriving from lower ground, night-time temperatures fall well below freezing, and settlements nearest the epicentre are hours from major towns.

Much remains unclear. Officials have not said how many people were hurt across the county, whether roads, power lines or communications were cut, or whether public buildings such as schools and clinics were damaged. It is also not known how many strong aftershocks are likely, or whether any occurred in areas that lost contact after the main shock.

Chinese authorities are expected to send survey teams through the affected townships overnight and to publish updated figures as reports arrive. Tibet is a region with tightly restricted access for foreign journalists, so official Chinese statements are likely to remain the main source of information, and independent confirmation of the damage may take time.

The quake was far from Bangladesh and there was no indication that it affected the country. Bangladesh sits on the edge of the wider collision zone and has its own long-standing seismic concerns, but Thursday's epicentre was deep inside the Tibetan plateau.

Bangladesh's state chemical corporation wants to bring every government-run fertiliser plant back into production, saying restored gas supply would cut a large part of the country's urea import bill, its chairman said on Thursday.

Md Babul Miah, chairman of the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC), put the potential saving at about Tk 22,000 crore. He spoke to reporters in Brahmanbaria after inspecting the Ashuganj Fertilizer and Chemical Company Ltd (AFCCL), the state news agency BSS reported.

"We want to make BCIC's factories operational," Babul Miah said, adding that the country imports 26 to 27 lakh tonnes of urea a year. With adequate gas, he said, the state plants could cover domestic demand and even export urea.

The Ashuganj plant has been out of production since 1 March 2025 because of the gas shortage. It has a rated capacity of about 5.28 lakh tonnes of urea a year and needs roughly 47 to 48 million cubic feet of gas a day to run at full output. Babul Miah said he hoped the factory could restart this year if gas is made available.

"Our main problem is the gas crisis," he said. "If we can bring the factories back into operation, we will no longer need to import fertilizer."

AFCCL Managing Director Sheikh Md Ali Asraf and the plant's deputy general manager for administration, Tajul Islam Bhuiyan, were present during the visit. Neither they nor the chairman gave a date for a restart or said how much gas the plant would need to be allotted.

The plants matter because urea is the country's most widely used nitrogen fertiliser and demand peaks between November and March, when farmers grow Boro rice, the crop that accounts for more than half of Bangladesh's annual grain output. Missing the window would leave farmers dependent on imports at a time when global prices and shipping are unsettled.

The state factories run on natural gas, and their troubles follow the country's wider energy shortage. In March this year, BCIC shut five of its six major urea plants when gas was rationed as the Middle East war disrupted LNG shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Only one plant kept running at the time, and officials said the closed units had a combined capacity of about 7,100 tonnes a day.

Bangladesh produces about 40 percent of the urea it uses and imports the rest, mainly from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, according to The Daily Star. Those suppliers depend on the same Gulf routes that have been disrupted, which is why BCIC has repeatedly had to tender for emergency cargoes.

Every tonne made at home instead of bought abroad also eases pressure on foreign exchange reserves, which have been stretched by costly energy imports. Idle factories are not free either: wages, loan interest and maintenance continue while the machinery sits still.

Several questions remain unanswered. BSS did not say whether the Tk 22,000 crore figure is an annual saving or covers a longer period, nor how it was calculated. The report also gave no timetable for restoring gas, no indication of how much gas the energy authorities are prepared to divert to fertiliser production, and no comment from the Energy Division or Petrobangla, which allocate supply.

It is also unclear whether urea cargoes already contracted from abroad will still be delivered, and what a restart would mean for the subsidised retail price farmers pay. The government has not announced any change to that price.

For now, BCIC says it is pressing its case with the government while the Boro season approaches. The immediate decision rests with the energy authorities, who must weigh fertiliser plants against households, power generation and export industries that are all short of gas. If Ashuganj stays idle, the import bill the chairman wants to cut will keep growing.