Chinese soldiers search for survivors in Yadong county, Tibet Autonomous Region on Monday after an earthquake hit India over the weekend. Photo: Xinhua

Rescuers battled landslides and heavy rains on Monday to reach areas hit by a 6.9-magnitude earthquake over the weekend that killed more than 60 people in China, India and Nepal.

The earthquake struck the northeastern Indian state of Sikkim at 6:10 pm at a relatively shallow depth of 19.7 kilometers near India's border with Nepal, followed by two minor aftershocks minutes later.

The Indian Meteorological Department said that the quake had a magnitude of 6.8.

But the US Geological Survey, initially reporting the quake at 6.8, upgraded it to 6.9.

The tremor was felt by people in the region as far as New Delhi, Dhaka and Lhasa, capital city of Tibet Autonomous Region.

"The tremor lasted for about one minute. Because of experience from previous drills, we quickly climbed down to open areas," Yang Dongyun, an employee from a travel agency in Lhasa whose office is on the 10th floor, told the Global Times.

"Most of the residents on the ground felt nothing abnormal. We went back to the office after about 30 minutes," Yang said.

"We experience such tremors at least twice every year. There is no need to worry about the earthquake's impact on Tibet's tourism," he added.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, the earthquake affected 13 counties in Tibet.

In Yadong county, Xigaze Prefecture, 40 kilometers away from the epicenter, seven people were killed and 24 others were injured.

An initial survey showed that the earthquake had rendered more than 70 percent of residential houses in Yadong unsafe, the Xinhua News Agency reported, citing local disaster relief headquarters.

As of noon on Monday, communication services and road traffic to Yadong were restored after heavy machinery was mobilized to clear the debris, Ji Xiaopeng, secretary of Yadong County Committee of the Communist Party of China, told Xinhua.

Tibet's regional government allocated a relief fund of 10 million yuan ($1.56 million) to the affected areas on Monday.

Meanwhile, the Tibet Military Command has dispatched more than 1,000 officers, soldiers and paramilitary reserve forces to carry out local quake relief work.

By press time, the military had pulled 23 people out of the debris and dug out four bodies, according to the Command.

In India, at least 52 people were killed in the disaster, including 39 in sparsely populated Sikkim.

The earthquake struck amid heavy rains in the region. Most of the deaths occurred when houses, already weakened from recent monsoon rains, collapsed during the tremor.

The heavy rains and landslides also hampered rescue workers who were searching for survivors.

According to India's Ministry of Home Affairs, there were at least 16 landslides in a stretch of 10 kilometers in Sikkim. Several important roads in the state have been washed away, and the main highway has been blocked.

In addition to the stormy weather, the remote location and mountainous landscape of the Sikkim region are making rescue efforts even harder.

"Even if casualties are low, there is likely to be a need for humanitarian assistance for affected civilians whose homes have been destroyed and who need food and shelter," an official from the UN's disaster management team in New Delhi told Reuters on condition of anonymity.

"There's a good chance the death toll could rise as rescue teams begin to access the more remote areas," G. Anandan, chief of the central emergency control room in Gangtok, told AFP.

Major General S.L. Narasimhan, an officer in charge of rescue efforts, told the reporters that the Indian army deployed over 2,500 troops to join the rescue efforts.

"About 44 columns of soldiers are working in various parts of Sikkim, while another 15 are in the East District of the state. We are also sending teams to Darjeeling and Kalimpong (in West Bengal)," he said.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday announced a compensation package of 200,000 rupees ($4,000) for each family of people killed in the earthquake and 100,000 rupees for each seriously injured victim.

In Nepal, police said a motorcyclist and his 8-year-old daughter were among at least seven killed when a wall crumbled at the British embassy compound in Kathmandu, 270 kilometers west of the epicenter, AFP reported.

"We need to prepare for possibly a much worse situation and we are already getting stocks of tarpaulins and other basic aid ready," Victoria Bannon of the International Federation of the Red Cross told Reuters by phone from Nepal, where rain, poor communications and landslides were also hampering efforts.

The quake was the biggest recorded in northeastern India in 20 years and the fourth mid-sized quake this year, according to Indian media.

The quake came just days after a 4.2-magnitude earthquake hit the region, causing tremors in New Delhi.

Records from the Indian Central Seismological Observatory showed increasing seismic activity in the region, according to the Indian Express.

A total of 34 quakes of light and moderate intensity were felt in the region in 2009. The area witnessed 26 earthquakes each in 2008 and 2007, and 23 in 2006, the newspaper reported on Monday.

In 2001, a devastating earthquake in the western Indian state of Gujarat killed at least 19,700 people and caused damage in neighboring Pakistan.

Liu Linlin and agencies contributed to this story