China steps up quake rescue effort as death toll hits 589

The death toll from a powerful earthquake in southwest China has risen to 589, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday, with hundreds of homes and some schools toppled in the remote mountainous Tibetan Plateau.

The agency quoted local quake-relief headquarters as giving the figure following Wednesday's quake, which also injured thousands. The death toll had earlier stood at 400.

Hundreds of troops have been sent to Qinghai Province's Yushu county. Xinhua said teams of rescue workers, as well as health and disease control experts had also been dispatched, together with groups tasked with detecting aftershocks.

Local officials had spoken on Wednesday of the urgent need for medicine and medical workers.                                           

"I see injured people everywhere. The biggest problem now is that we lack tents, we lack medical equipment, medicine and medical workers," Zhuohuaxia, a local spokesman, told Xinhua. 

Some aid shipments from private organisations have set off from the provincial capital, Xining.

More than 10,000 people were injured and thousands left homeless in freezing conditions after a series of quakes and aftershocks caused many of the low, mud-brick buildings in county to collapse, residents and state media said.

A dam has "cracked", Xinhua said, and "workers are trying to prevent the outflow of water". It was not immediately clear how large the dam was or what damage it could cause if it burst.

The main 6.9 quake was centred in the mountains that divide Qinghai province from the Tibet Autonomous Region.

"People are very scared," said Pierre Deve, with Snowland Service Group, a local non-government organisation, adding that many had already given up hope for those still trapped. 

Some bridges and roads around Yushu have cracked or been cut off completely, which could complicate rescue efforts, state television said. The airport is open, but the road connecting it to the county seat has been heavily damaged, it added.                                           

The Tibetan plateau is regularly shaken by earthquakes, though casualties are usually minimal because so few people live there.

Yushu is home to some 100,000 people, spread over a vast area, but the quake struck near the relatively highly-populated county seat of Jyeku.

Government officials told state media the majority of houses had been badly damaged. 

Photos showed larger concrete buildings mostly intact, with rubble around them. 

Rescue efforts                                    

President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have demanded no effort be spared in rescue attempts, and sent Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu to Qinghai to oversee relief work, state television said.

Exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who was born in Qinghai, said in a statement he was praying for the victims.

"It is my hope that all possible assistance and relief work will reach these people. I am also exploring how I, too, can contribute to these efforts," said the Nobel Peace Prize winner, accused by Beijing of promoting Tibetan independence.

He says he simply wants more meaningful autonomy for Tibet.                                           

Xinhua reported that the early morning quake had caused some schools and part of a government office building to cave in. Some vocational school students and primary school students were trapped in the rubble, it said, although residents said most students had been able to flee to playgrounds.

"Most of the schools in Yushu were built fairly recently and should have been able to withstand the earthquake," said Wang Liling, a volunteer worker for Gesanghua, a Chinese charity that helps school children in Qinghai. Her group, she said, had heard that a vocational school collapsed in Yushu.

Xinhua quoted one teacher, identified only by his surname Chang, at an Yushu primary school who said five of their pupils had died when the buildings collapsed.

"Morning sessions did not begin when the quake happened. Some pupils ran out of dorms alive, and those who had not escaped in time were buried," Chang said.

The widespread collapse of school buildings when other surrounding buildings stayed standing, caused anger and accusations of corruption after the devastating May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province, which killed 80,000.

The quake was centred in the mountains that divide Qinghai province from the Tibet Autonomous Region.

The foothills to the south and east of the area are home to herders and Tibetan monasteries of Yushu county, while the area to the north and west is arid and desolate.