URUMQI, March 21 (Xinhua) -- At least a dozen earthquakes jolted Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in China's remote northwest on Friday. No casualties were reported so far.

    The first and strongest 7.3-magnitude tremor hit Yutian County, Hotian Prefecture, in southern Xinjiang, at 6:33 a.m. It was followed by at least 12 aftershocks measuring over 3.8 on the Richter scale.

    A number of other minor quakes were also registered, according to the Xinjiang seismological bureau.

    Four houses in Pulu, the nearest village to the epicenter located in the sparsely-inhabited Kunlun Mountain region, collapsed during the first tremor, but the dwellers escaped.

    Residents of another 110 households in the village, which is far beyond the 80 kilometer radius measuring scope, were evacuated to safe places as of 4 p.m. The 190 families who had moved to quake-proof residences built by the local government over the past three years, were unaffected, the local government said after an immediate field investigation.

    The village temporarily closed its sole primary school on Friday. The building remained intact.

    An expert at the forecast center of the seismological bureau said the quakes were unlikely to cause casualties since no one was injured in the first one.

    A Hotian official said the quakes mainly affected the townships of Aqqan and Bostan in Yutian and Qira counties, respectively. The total population in the townships was about 13,400.

    Power supply, telecom and traffic were almost unaffected.

    In 2004, the Hotian government launched a project to set up anti-earthquake houses for 356,000 families in five years to ensure safety in the quake-prone Kunlun Mountain region.

    More than 1.2 million people in 257,000 households had moved to new anti-seismic buildings by September last year.