A powerful earthquake killed up to 72 people in Kyrgyzstan and wrecked dozens of homes in the remote and mountainous south of the Central Asian state on Sunday, the country's Health Ministry said on Monday.

The epicenter of the quake struck the Ferghana valley, a populated trading region at the corner of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and China's far western region of Xinjiang.

According to a US Geological Survey report the quake measured 6.6 on the Richter scale at a depth of 35 kilometres, while China's State Seismological Bureau said it measured the quake at 6.8.

The Health Ministry said 72 people were killed, local news agency AKIpress reported.

The Emergency Ministry said another 50 people were injured in the mountain town of Nura along Kyrgyzstan's border with China, where at least 120 homes were destroyed, news agency Interfax reported.

Nura, a remote village of 960 residents, is "almost completely destroyed," said ministry spokesman Kamchibek Tashiyev.

"Getting aid to victims is made difficult by remoteness of the villages which were affected by the earthquake and the destruction of the roads ... the nearest point providing medical aid is 76 kilometres from Nura," health ministry official Dinara Sagynbayeva said.

Earthquakes are frequent in the region. A magnitude 6 quake jolted the nearby Uzbek capital of Tashkent this August though it caused little damage.

The earthquake also rattled a large area across the border in China, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

A 5.7-magnitude aftershock was recorded in Xinjiang about 20 minutes after the first quake, which mainly affected the sparsely populated Wuqia county, the State Seismological Bureau said.

The earlier quake was felt strongly in Kashgar, China's nearest city to the epicenter, state media said.