BEIJING — An earthquake that Chinese officials measured at magnitude 7.1 rocked a remote, mostly Tibetan-populated county in the western province of Qinghai early Wednesday, killing at least 300 people and injuring 8,000.

The quake struck 20 miles from the county seat of Yushu, where it toppled houses, an elementary school, part of a Buddhist tower in a public park and seriously damaged the main hospital in town, officials told Chinese media.

“”Many are buried in the collapsed houses,”” Zhuo Huaxia, a local Tibetan official, told the official New China News Agency. “”There are still lots of others who are injured and being treated at local hospitals.””

Yushu is about 500 miles southwest of Qinghai’s capital, Xining, and has a mostly Tibetan population of 100,000 people, many of them herdsmen. Numerous houses made of mud and logs collapsed during the quake and its aftershocks.

“”The death toll may rise further as lots of houses collapsed,”” an army official told the China Daily. “”Roads leading to the airport have been damaged, hampering the rescue effort.””

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake measured a magnitude 6.9. There were at least six aftershocks, the strongest a magnitude 6.2.

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Tommy Yangof the Los Angeles Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.