Hundreds of quake victims cremated

The death toll of the disaster in north-west China officially reached 1,339 yesterday, with 332 missing.

The 6.9-magnitude quake hit Yushu county in Qinghai province, where most residents are ethnic Tibetans, devoted to their own branch of Buddhism.

Thousands of people converged on a hillside cremation site, where a convoy of lorries took many hundreds of bodies that had been kept at the main local monastery.

Before the cremation, monks higher up on the hill oversaw a small "sky burial", when parts of the dead were fed to the vultures, which were later seen circling through the smoke billowing from the hillside fire.

At the cremation, people wept and chanted as monks in crimson gowns lit the piles of bodies covered in yak oil, wood and old tyres. Hundreds of monks droned prayer-chants as the flames sent a column of smoke into the sky.

"People will feel very sad for a long time," said Dashi, a middle-aged man. "Tibetans have not experienced such a disaster in 2,500 years."

But for some the grief was mixed with defiant pride. Many Tibetans resent the Han Chinese presence in the mountainous region high on the Tibetan plateau and the controls the ruling Chinese Communist Party places on their Buddhist religion.

After the earthquake on Wednesday, thousands of Buddhist monks rushed in to help with rescue and relief, and yesterday Tibetans spoke proudly of their work.

"Today is a day for all Tibetan compatriots," said Guyong Wose, a 19-year-old monk who had travelled from Tagong in south-west Sichuan province to help.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, to whom many of Yushu's inhabitants are loyal, said he longed to go to the area.

"I am unable to comfort those directly affected, but I would like them to know I am praying for them," he said, while commending the authorities' relief efforts.