BISHKEK, (AFP) - - Sixty people were killed when a strong earthquake hit Kyrgyzstan close to the country's border with China, the top emergency official in the former Soviet republic said Monday.

"According to preliminary figures, 60 people died and more than 100 locals were injured to various degrees," Kyrgyz Emergency Situations Minister Kamchybek Tashiyev told journalists on Monday.

Earlier, the ministry said 58 had been killed in the quake, which hit the Alaisky district of southern Kyrgyzstan late Sunday evening.

Seismologists in the United States reported that the strong 6.6 magnitude quake struck Kyrgyzstan at 9:52 pm (15:52 GMT).

Destruction was concentrated in Nura, a village of 950 residents close to Kyrgyzstan's mountainous border with China.

"The picture we saw was frightening. The village of Nura is fully destroyed, 100 percent, there are many injured," Tashiyev said.

Officials said rescue efforts were being hampered by the remoteness of the village and a lack of telephone ties with it.

"Efforts to assist the victims are being complicated by the distance of the villages... from hospitals, by a lack of communications and by the destruction of the roads," said health ministry official Dinara Sagynbayeva.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the epicentre of the earthquake was 60 kilometres (35 miles) east-southeast of Sary-Tash at a depth of 27.6 kilometres (17.2 miles).

An aftershock of magnitude 5.1 hit the region just over two hours later at 12:27 am Monday (18:27 GMT Sunday), the USGS said.

Kyrgyzstan, a landlocked and mountainous nation of five million people, is one of the poorest states of the former Soviet Union.