China cremates quake dead as hopes of finding survivors fade
JIEGU, China - China began the mass cremation of hundreds of earthquake victims over sanitation fears Saturday as hopes dimmed of finding further survivors among the more than 400 people still missing.
Hundreds of naked, bloodied and bruised corpses were piled on a huge funeral pyre outside the shattered town of Jiegu on the remote Tibetan plateau and lit by chanting Buddhist monks, three days after the quake killed 1,144 people.
"We have never had a disaster like this. We have never had so many people die. Cremation is the only way to send these souls off," said Jiemi Zhangsuo, a priest who heads the area's main Buddhist monastery that handled the ceremony.
But the struggle was far from over for the devastated region of Qinghai province, with thousands left homeless and injured as authorities fought to get sufficient relief personnel and aid to the isolated region.
The death toll looked set to rise with officials saying on Saturday that more than 400 people were still missing and almost 1,200 seriously injured.
More than 11,000 people were injured in the quake, which caused flimsy traditional m&d and wood dwellings to collapse.
Infrastructure in Jiegu, the main population centre in the quake-hit region has been shattered, with the water supply "basically paralysed", Xia Xueping, spokesman for relief efforts, told a press briefing in Jiegu.
He said all traditional dwellings in the town, home to tens of thousands of people, had fallen while sturdier brick and concrete structures also had either collapsed or suffered heavy damage.
About 13,000 rescue personnel had arrived in the region to aid rescue and recovery efforts but they faced freezing weather and a lack of oxygen due to the altitude of around 4,000 metres.
At least 1,000 aftershocks also continued to rock the area, including one Saturday morning with a magnitude of 5.1 that was centred about 400 kilometres west of Jiegu, according to the US Geological Survey.
Premier Wen Jiabao wrapped up a two-day tour of the disaster area on Friday by casting recovery efforts as a chance to foster unity in a region whose Buddhist ethnic Tibetans have a history of chafing at Chinese rule.
"We can overcome the disaster and improve national unity in fighting the calamity," Wen was quoted saying.
Ethnic Tibetans make up more than 90 percent of people in the quake region.
State media said the dead included more than 100 students and 12 teachers as schools and dormitories collapsed, with dozens more buried or missing.
The casualties recalled the devastating 2008 earthquake in neighbouring Sichuan province, in which thousands of students were among the 87,000 killed or missing in that disaster amid allegations shoddy construction was to blame.
After initial slow start due to the region's remoteness and road damage, authorities said relief supplies including tens of thousands of tents, coats and quilts and tonnes of food had begun pouring into the area.
At a briefing in Beijing, government officials said no signs of epidemic had yet been seen but they ordered stepped-up disinfection efforts to head off the threat.
Rescuers suffering altitude sickness pulled a 13-year-old girl and an elderly Tibetan woman with broken legs from the rubble on Friday, 57 hours after the quake, Xinhua said.
But reports warned that hopes of finding other survivors were fading after the first three days of a disaster.
"The first 72 hours offers the best chance of survival after such a calamity strikes," Xi Mei, a medical attendant with the China International Rescue Medical Team, told Xinhua.
