A strong, shallow earthquake shook southwestern China’s Yunnan province late Tuesday evening, killing one people, sending thousands fleeing into the streets and damaging buildings, officials and reports said.

China’s national earthquake monitoring agency gave the quake’s magnitude as 6.6 and said it struck just 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) below the surface. It said the quake was followed by eight aftershocks, the strongest of which registered at magnitude 4.2. The U.S. Geological Survey said the earthquake measured magnitude 6.0 and was centered 18 kilometers (11 miles) from Weiyuan city at a depth of 10.1 kilometers (6.3 miles). Its shallow focus was likely to cause greater damage.

The quake hit at 9:49 p.m. (1349 GMT) when most residents would have been in their homes.

In the town of Yongping, just 5 kilometers (3 miles), at least one person was killed and three others injured, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The surrounding county of Jinggu closest to the epicenter has a population of 290,000.

Yunnan provincial officials report that they have found a 5 to 8 centimeter crack in the Changhai reservoir in Yongping, the center of today’s earthquake.

“The whole building was shaking terribly with a loud cracking sound. Plates fell off in the kitchen. We all ran out and the streets now are packed with people,” Li Anqin, a resident living in Weiyuan, Jinggu’s county seat, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Xinhua said strong tremors were felt in the provincial capital, Kunming, about 360 kilometers (220 miles) to the northeast. It said an initial 230-member rescue team had been dispatched to the quake area within two hours of its striking.

CCTV‘s reporter in the city of Pu’er, about 85 kilometers (53 miles) from the epicenter, said people fled buildings and were camping out of doors in anticipation of more aftershocks. The reporter, Wang Jian, said there was damage to structures and the local cellphone network, but had heard no reports of deaths or injuries.

The remote mountainous region near the border with Myanmar is prone to earthquakes. A 6.1-magnitude quake in northern Yunnan in August killed at least 615 people and left more than 100 others missing. In 1970, a magnitude-7.7 earthquake in Yunnan killed at least 15,000 people.

Reporting by The Associated Press, Xinhua News Agency, and CCTV News.