Hungry survivors desperately await help

Quake survivor Sonammon, 52, who lost ten members of her family from a quake, which has killed 760 in China's remote Qinghai province on April 14, gestures in prayer while holding onto her nephew.Photo: AFP

Hungry and dazed survivors of China's earthquake waited desperately for a relief response to kick in yesterday as the government rushed supplies to the isolated area high on the Tibetan plateau.
Preparations were under way for the cremation of hundreds of victims of the disaster, which killed at least 791 people, as concern turned toward possible disease outbreaks in the stricken town of Jiegu in Qinghai province.
An AFP journalist saw the bodies of 600 people laid out on the floor of a warehouse-like structure at the main Tibetan Buddhist monastery overlooking the town, with locals saying they were to be cremated beginning Saturday morning.
The wail of sirens and stench of death filled the air as relief vehicles thundered through the hard-hit town in Yushu county near the epicentre of Wednesday's quake.
Thousands of survivors of the 6.9 magnitude earthquake waited for large-scale shipments of food and other aid after spending two freezing and hungry nights without food or shelter.
"I have lost everything," a distraught ethnic Tibetan woman who gave her name as Sonaman told AFP.
Wandering the streets with her four-year-old nephew tucked under her coat, Sonaman, 52, said through tears that her mother, father, and sister had died.
"My house has been destroyed. It's been flattened. My family lost 10 people. We have nothing. We have nothing to eat."
The death toll looked set to climb with another 300 people feared trapped under rubble as Premier Wen Jiabao called for all-out efforts to find survivors in a tour of the area Friday.
"We will make all-out efforts to build a new Yushu," Wen told victims, according to official Xinhua news agency, a day after urging rescuers to step up search efforts.
The quake flattened thousands of the mud and wood homes inhabited by ethnic Tibetans, who make up more than 90 percent of the region's people, and also heavily damaged sturdier concrete structures such as schools.
State media said the dead included 103 students and 12 teachers as schools and dormitories collapsed, with dozens more buried or missing.
The casualties recalled the devastating 2008 earthquake in neighbouring Sichuan province, in which thousands of students were among the 87,000 killed or missing in that disaster amid allegations shoddy construction was to blame.
Homeless Jiegu residents expressed fears about disease due to large numbers of human and animal bodies left rotting in the open.
At a briefing in Beijing, government officials said no signs of epidemic had yet been seen but pledged stepped-up efforts to head off the threat.
"(Authorities) have already started treating human waste and bodies in the disaster-stricken area to prevent any dangerous impact on the local environment," said Chen Xianyi, a health ministry official.