UCHTURPAN, China (AP) — As aftershocks from an earthquake continued to rattle western China on Wednesday, more than 12,000 people slept in tents and sturdier shelters and lit bonfires to shelter from the freezing weather.

The previous day, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake in a remote part of China’s Xinjiang region killed three people, injured five and damaged hundreds of buildings.

The quake caused significant damage, but the loss of life and property was relatively low, reflecting the small population and efforts in recent years to improve the durability of housing conditions around the epicenter in Ukhturpan County, near the border with Kyrgyzstan.

Footage shown by state broadcaster CCTV on Wednesday showed evacuees eating instant noodles in tents as campfires provided warmth.

Jian Gewa, a 16-year-old student in Uchturpan, said he was in the bathroom when the quake began. The entire building shook violently.

“I just thought I had to get to safety as quickly as possible,” Jian said.

He was evacuated to a school, where he lived in a dormitory with his grandfather along with about 200 others. Local officials said they wanted to check homes for stability before allowing people to return.

The earthquake struck in a sparsely populated area with a cluster of towns and villages scattered across an otherwise barren winter landscape. A two-lane highway runs about 125 kilometers (78 miles) into the area from the town of Aksu, through frozen brown flatland on one side and rugged rocky outcrops on the other. Power lines and the occasional cement factory are virtually the only signs of human presence.

In Kizilsu Kirgiz Prefecture, the earthquake caused varying degrees of damage to 851 buildings, led to the collapse of 93 buildings near the epicenter and killed 910 farm animals, according to the prefecture’s deputy party secretary Wurouziali Haxihaerbayi.

The area is populated primarily by Kyrgyz and Uyghurs, ethnic Turkic minorities who are predominantly Muslim and have been the target of a state campaign of forced assimilation and mass incarceration. The region is heavily militarized and state broadcaster CCTV showed paramilitary troops moving in before dawn to clear rubble and set up tents for the displaced.

Two of the three people who died were members of a Kyrgyz sheepherding family that had brought their flock up the mountain and stayed overnight in their rest hut, said Shi Chao, the Communist Party chairman of Kulansarike township.

Rescuers found the family of three, including a 6-year-old girl, and brought them down the mountain, but only the father survived, Shi said.

The community has replaced the shacks with sturdier buildings, some of which are subsidized by the government, he said. The third death occurred elsewhere in Akqi County.

The prefecture has dispatched more than 2,300 rescuers and Akqi County has evacuated 7,338 residents. A total of 12,426 people were evacuated.

Rescue workers combed through the rubble while emergency equipment such as coats and tents arrived to help the thousands of people who had fled their homes.

“This rating of 7.1 is very high, but the death and injury situation is not serious,” Zhang Yongjiu, the head of the Xinjiang Earthquake Administration, said at a news conference.

The quake’s epicenter was in a mountainous area about 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) above sea level, Zhang said.

In Yamansu township, about 115 people were staying in a Communist Party meeting hall on Wednesday morning, their bed linen neatly rolled up on five long rows of metal bed frames. Medical staff were on site to examine the elderly residents.

A grandmother fed one of her grandchildren on one of the beds while an older child slurped instant noodles.

Outside, men were chatting around a large metal wood stove with a stovepipe, two of them wearing chef’s hats. Pieces of meat and vegetables lay in large plastic and metal containers on two weather-beaten desks set up outside.

A light layer of snow covered the frozen ground while temperatures remained well below freezing, although the sun lured people outside.

The quake occurred shortly after 2 a.m. on Tuesday. By evening, according to the authorities, three people had died and five had been injured, two of them seriously.

State broadcaster CCTV said 1,104 aftershocks were recorded as of 8 a.m. Wednesday, including five with a magnitude above 5.0. The largest was recorded at magnitude 5.7.

Among the damaged buildings, 47 houses had collapsed, the government of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region posted on its official Weibo social media account on Tuesday.

Officials said most of the collapsed houses were in remote areas and were built by local residents. Newer public housing built by the government did not collapse.

In Yamansu, most of the damage occurred to animal shelters and exterior property walls, which are made of cement-clad bricks and are not as sturdy as the houses. Some of the homes showed minor damage and residents in the worst-hit area were ordered to stay in shelters until authorities completed inspections.

Footage broadcast by CCTV showed staff at Aksu station sending passengers out of the waiting hall quickly but not in panic.

In the mountainous Uchturpan district, temperatures are recorded well below freezing. The Chinese Meteorological Administration is forecasting low temperatures of minus 18 degrees Celsius (just below zero degrees Fahrenheit) this week.

According to Xinjiang authorities, the county had a population of around 233,000 in 2022.

The quake destroyed power lines, but power was quickly restored, Aksu authorities said. The Urumqi Railroad Bureau resumed operations after 7 a.m. after safety checks found no problems on the railway lines. The suspension affected 23 trains, the Xinjiang capital’s office said on its official Weibo account.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the region’s largest quake in the past century was also a magnitude 7.1 and occurred in 1978 about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Tuesday’s epicenter.

Tremors were felt hundreds of kilometers (miles) away.

Tremors were also felt in neighboring Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and reportedly as far away as New Delhi. Videos posted on messaging platform Telegram showed people in the Kazakh city of Almaty running down stairs in apartment blocks and standing in the street in freezing weather, some of them wearing shorts.

In Xinjiang and Kazakhstan, classes have been suspended to allow children to recover from the shock.

Earthquakes are common in western China.

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake that struck Gansu province in December killed 151 people and was China’s deadliest quake in nine years. An earthquake in Sichuan province in 2008 killed nearly 90,000 people.

Elsewhere, authorities on Tuesday raised the confirmed death toll from a landslide in a remote, mountainous part of China’s southwestern Yunnan province to 31, Chinese state media reported.

The disaster occurred shortly before 6 a.m. on Monday in the mountain village of Liangshui. Authorities said Tuesday that a total of 44 people were either missing or found dead.