China's northwestern region of Xinjiang was hit by a major earthquake and several strong aftershocks early Friday, the country's official media and earthquake monitoring centers reported. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages in the sparsely populated, mountainous region inhabited by people of minority ethnic groups, mostly Uygurs. The Chinese Seismological Network, which uses the Richter scale, measured the strongest jolt 7.3 and said it occurred at 6:33 a.m. in Yutian County in the western part of the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to a Xinhua News Agency report.