Rescuers and aid began trickling in yesterday to a remote area of northwest China devastated by a quake that left 760 people dead and 100,000 homeless.
Battling bitingly cold weather and a lack of oxygen, rescue workers clawed with their bare hands through the rubble of homes and schools toppled by the 6.9 magnitude quake that hit Yushu county in Qinghai province on Wednesday.
Officials said medical teams and vital supplies such as tents and quilts were on their way to the zone, where doctors set up makeshift hospitals to treat victims of the deadliest quake in China in two years.
But thousands were bracing for another night without shelter in freezing temperatures after the quake destroyed almost all the mudbrick and wooden houses in Jiegu, the local capital, and flattened schools and other buildings.
"I lost my husband and I lost my house," Gandan, a Jiegu resident, said, her son and daughter at her side. All three were living in a nomad tent with other people, with one bowl of barley to share between them. "We don't know what to do, we have no food," she said, standing by the tent a stone's throw from her collapsed mud and brick house.
The number who perished rose to 760, including dozens of children, while 11,477 were injured, the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting rescue coordinators.
The death toll was expected to rise further, as more than 243 were still buried and local officials reported they were short of medical supplies and large digging equipment.
"The rescue job in this disaster zone faces many difficulties," said Miao Chonggang, deputy chief of the China Earthquake Administration's relief and emergency response department.
President Hu Jintao cut short a Latin American tour because of the quake and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao postponed a trip to Southeast Asia. Mr Hu told a news conference in Brasilia that it was "a huge calamity which resulted in big losses of human life".
Mr Wen yesterday visited the quake zone, an underdeveloped area of the Tibetan plateau known as the "Roof of the World".
"The situation is really bad here. The damage is huge," said Pierre Deve, a Frenchman working for a Chinese charity in Jiegu.
"Only a few buildings are still up... There were bodies everywhere in the rubble."
Soldiers, police and firefighters used shovels, iron bars and bare hands to dig through the mangled piles of concrete and rubble from 15,000 toppled homes.
Foreign governments offered help as international aid officials warned that the priorities would be providing shelter, medical aid, food and water and ensuring sanitation to prevent the spread of disease.
Among those offering help, Japan said it would give more than one million dollars.
Jiegu lies around 800 kilometres by road from the provincial capital Xining, about 4,000 metres above sea level, meaning rescue workers from outside the region struggled to cope with the lack of oxygen.