Thousands Displaced By Quake In Xinjiang, China

Thousands of people have been made homeless by an earthquake on Sunday in remote Qapqal, in China's far western region of Xinjiang near the Kazakh border, the Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

The earthquake, which measured 5.0 on the Richter scale, hit an area inhabited by the Xibe people, a community originally from Manchuria that established a frontier garrison in Xinjiang during the Qing dynasty.

It destroyed nearly 200 homes and damaged nearly 3,000 buildings on Sunday morning. No casualties have been reported so far.

More than 4,500 people have been moved to schools, government buildings and tents, in two counties about 700 km to the west of the regional capital, Urumqi, Xinhua said.