| China earthquake death toll rises to 67,183 by Tuesday noon | ||
The death toll from China's May 12 earthquake increased by more than 2,100 to 67,183 as of midday Tuesday, according to the Information Office of the State Council. A total of 361,822 people were injured and 20,790 others are missing in the 8.0-magnitude quake that struck the southwestern Sichuan Province on May 12. More than 45.61 million people were affected and about 15 million have been relocated, according to the office. As of 7 p.m. on Monday, the quake had left 66,674 dead and 350,133 injured in Sichuan alone. A total of 83,988 people had been rescued and more than 6.7 million had been relocated. A total of 64,719 bodies had been buried in the province. Hospitals have treated 84,810 injured, of whom 54,374 have been discharged, while 16,288 remain hospitalized and 6,363 have been transferred to other parts of the country for treatment. As of Monday, disaster relief workers had relocated 698,302 people to safe areas and dug 6,541 survivors from ruined buildings. By Tuesday noon, Beichuan Township still had no electricity. The power in Jiangyou and Pengzhou counties had been restored. Meanwhile, 566,400 tents had been delivered to quake-affected areas as of Tuesday noon, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said. More than 3.5 million quilts and 8.34 million items of clothing had been sent to the quake-hit region, it added. About 450,000 tonnes of fuel and 940,000 tonnes of coal were also sent to the region, it said. As of Monday, 1,600 temporary homes had been set up in the quake zone and 4,000 were under construction. By Tuesday, 29,523 kilometers of the 32,939 kilometers of damaged roads had been repaired. No aftershocks measuring at or above 4 on the Richter scale have been monitored in southwest Sichuan Province from Monday noon to midday Tuesday, while 226 very feeble shocks below magnitude 3.9 were detected in the area, the China Seismological Bureau reported. However, two fresh aftershocks struck earthquake-hit areas in southwest China on Tuesday afternoon. A 5.4-magnitude aftershock hit Qingchuan County in Sichuan Province at about 4:03 p.m. and another 5.7-magnitude aftershock hit neighboring Ningqiang County in Shaanxi Province, according to the China National Seismological Network. As of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, donations from home and abroad to China's quake-hit regions had reached 32.7 billion yuan (4.67 billion U.S. dollars), up 1.8 billion yuan from the previous day, the Information Office said. So far, 9.4 billion yuan in cash and relief materials had been forwarded to the earthquake-affected areas. The government disaster relief fund for quake-stricken areas had hit 19.2 billion yuan as of 2 p.m. on Tuesday, up 2.6 billion yuan from the previous day, figures from the office showed. The fund included 15.13 billion yuan from the central budget and 4.09 billion yuan from the local budget. |
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