There were no indications of destructive earthquakes in the Tanggula Range in northwest China's Qinghai Province, which the Qinghai-Tibet railway passes through, the Qinghai earthquake bureau said on Wednesday.

"At present, we did not see any signs of destructive quakes. But aftershocks from Monday's earthquake would continue, judging by historical records and collected information," said Ren Tieshen, the bureau's deputy head.

As of 2:00 PM on Wednesday, the bureau has detected 225 tremors of more than 1.0 on the Richter scale since a 5.0-magnitude quake hit at 1:56 AM on Monday, among which four were above 5.0, said Ma Yuhu, an expert in the bureau's earthquake forecast center.

There were three moderate quakes measuring 5.1 to 5.5 on Tuesday.

The Tanggula sections of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway and Highway were not affected. At one location, Yanshiping, cracks were reported to have opened up on a few houses, but there were no reports of casualties so far.

The affected area is sparsely populated, since it is about 5,000 m above sea level.

The range has had 74 quakes measuring more than 5.0 since 1970, with the most powerful, measuring 6.8, in 1988.

(Xinhua News Agency June 12, 2008)