BEIJING - An earthquake measuring 5.0 on the Richter scale jolted a northern part of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, at 9:44 pm Beijing Time (13:44 GMT) Sunday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC).

No casualties have been reported in the sparsely-populated region.

The epicenter, with a depth of 4 km, was determined to be at 44.3 degrees north latitude and 82.7 degrees east longitude.

The epicenter is located at the Jinghe county in the Mongolian autonomous prefecture of Bortala, which is 400 km northwest of Xinjiang's regional capital city of Urumqi, the CENC said.

The population density within a 50-km radius of the epicenter is only 9 persons per km.

The average altitude within a radius of 30 km of the epicenter is around 2,200 meters, according to the CENC.

Nevertheless, due to the shallow depth, the quake was felt obviously in Jinghe and the neighboring cities of Usu, Karamay and Bole.

"The furniture were shaken hard and I was scared," citizen Zhou Jianling from Karamay told Xinhua via telephone.

A spokesman with the Jinghe Seismological Bureau told Xinhua that the bureau had dispatched staff to the quake-hit area to investigate whether there are building damages or property losses.

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