Enlarge image
Gansu province: Rescue workers search for survivors in rubble
Photo: Zhang Ling / AP
According to the official Xinhua news agency, at least 131 victims have died after the severe earthquake in northwestern China. According to the report, four more victims were recovered in Qinghai province after Monday's quake.
In Gansu province alone, 155,000 houses are said to have been destroyed. The survivors are housed in temporary quarters and mourn their dead. Around 80,000 people have been taken to emergency shelters, according to local authorities.
The earthquake had torn up roads and triggered landslides in the mountainous region. A village was buried under mud. The weather conditions, with temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, complicate the rescue work.
Most serious earthquake in nine years
Earthquakes are common in Gansu Province, which lies on the northeastern border of the tectonically active Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. The epicenter of the magnitude 6.2 quake was in Jishishan County in Gansu, where at least 113 people were killed. An estimated 900 people were injured.
It was the earthquake with the most casualties in the country in nine years. China's deadliest earthquake of magnitude 8.0 occurred in 2008, when nearly 70,000 people died in Sichuan province and another 5.8 million were left homeless.
ala/dpa