Earthquake kills 260

A devastating earthquake shook western China yesterday, killing about 260 people, injuring more than 4,000 and flattening homes, schools and other buildings near the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar.

People's Liberation Army soldiers and rescue workers combed the rubble for injured and dead from the mid-morning quake, which at 6.8 on the Richter scale was the worst to strike the Xinjiang region in five decades.

Hours after the earthquake, aftershocks rattled nerves, forcing villagers outdoors in near-freezing temperatures - too afraid to venture into their homes for fear of further damage.

Hospitals ran out of beds, relatives of victims in the predominantly Muslim region held funeral rites and officials in the regional capital Urumqi sent shipments of relief supplies.

"It was very frightening. The earthquake happened when I was riding my bicycle to the office. I've never experienced this before," said Abuliti, an official at a branch of the People's Bank of China in Bachu County, which was hit hardest.

The earthquake - the deadliest to hit Xinjiang since the Communists took power in 1949, according to Xinhua news agency - rocked the dry desert region bordering Central Asian states at 10:03 a.m. (0203 GMT), officials said.

The epicentre was near sparsely populated Jiashi county, 150 kilometres east of Kashgar. But Bachu county, further east, suffered most, officials and witnesses said.

Officials in Bachu said 260 people were dead and more than 4,000 injured. Half had suffered severe injuries and were being treated in the county People's Hospital, as well as hospitals in neighbouring counties and Kashgar, they said.

The latest Xinhua news agency report still put the death toll at 257 dead and more than 1,000 injured.

"It's rare for so many people to have died in an earthquake here," said Zhang Yong, a section director of the Xinjiang Seismological Bureau.

Zhou Mingcheng, a private businessman who runs a flour mill in stricken Arlagen village in Bachu county, and his family escaped from their collapsing home in the nick of time.

"We were sleeping at the time, and it was still dark. We ran out immediately when it began to shake," Zhou said.

The sun rises late in Xinjiang, which is thousands of kilometres (miles) west of Beijing though they remain on the same single Chinese time zone.

Two of the four rooms in his home became rubble, but Zhou considered himself lucky - more than 100 people in his village of 1,000 were feared dead.

"Lots of homes here collapsed. There is no electricity. Lots of people are outside now and no one dares stay at home."

Families held funerals for victims, many of them members of the Uighur ethnic group, following the Muslim tradition of burying family members on the same day of death.

Rescue workers searched the rubble for survivors. "The place is complete chaos," said a Kashgar official who would only give his surname, Zhang.

Some victims were students at a Bachu county school that was flattened, said Suyu, deputy director of the county civil affairs bureau. The quake also levelled a one-storey clinic, he said.

Officials in Urumqi and Bachu sent grain, milk and blankets to five hardest-hit villages and townships in the county, where temperatures were expected to drop below freezing overnight.

The Chinese Red Cross was preparing to send 2,000 quilts and 1,000 coats for those left homeless, Xinhua said. More than 5,000 soldiers, militia and police had joined in the rescue effort.

The central government sent a special team headed by a vice minister of civil affairs to investigate, and Vice Premier Wen Jiabao took charge of the relief effort, Xinhua reported.

"I was sorry to learn just in the last few minutes of the earthquake in western China and the loss of life. I want to express my regrets to the Chinese people," Powell said.

Earthquakes are common in China and regularly rattle the vast Tibetan plateau including Xinjiang, Qinghai province and Tibet, but few in have been so deadly.

An earthquake in January 1997 killed 50 in Xinjiang. Nine people were killed in a quake there in April that year.

A quake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale devastated Tangshan near China's capital Beijing on July 27, 1976, killing an estimated 250,000 people.