Rescue helicopters were dispatched in Kyrgyzstan to evacuate victims of a devastating earthquake that killed 75 people, including 41 children, in a remote mountain village near the Chinese border.

Military helicopters flew the injured from the flattened village of Nura, about 10 kilometers from China in the Tian Shan mountains, the emergency ministry said in a statement today, a national day of mourning.

"Almost all buildings in the village have been destroyed. The only buildings remaining are those built recently: the school and a medical clinic," the statement said. The death toll rose to 75 after a woman died in hospital overnight, the ministry said.

In addition to Nura's population of about 1,000, the ministry said some 1,000 visitors were in the village when the quake hit late Sunday, including businessmen, tourists and drivers who had just crossed the Chinese border. A Russian plane carrying rescue workers and humanitarian aid was due to take off for Kyrgyzstan today.

The quake had a magnitude of 6.6 according to the US Geological Survey (USGS), and was felt as far away as the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek, approximately 400 kilometres from Nura.


Hours later, a powerful tremor struck a sparsely populated area of China's Himalayan region of Tibet, killing nine people, Chinese state media reported.

The dead in the Kyrgyz quake included 41 children, Deputy Health Minister Madamin Karatayev said yesterday. "It all happened so suddenly, so horribly, the earth suddenly groaned and the house fell apart like cards, and what was worse -- my six children were underneath the debris," Akim Zhoroev, one of the survivors, recalled.