Monks pray for dead as earthquake rescue winds down

TIBETAN monks prayed over hundreds of bodies at a makeshift morgue next to their monastery yesterday after powerful earthquakes destroyed the remote mountain town of Jiegu in western China, leaving at least 1,144 people dead.

State media reported that 417 people remain missing – as rescuers neared the end of the 72-hour period viewed as best for finding people alive. They continued to dig for survivors in the rubble, often by hand.

Gerlai Tenzing, a red-robed monk from the Jiegu Monastery, estimated that 1,000 bodies had been brought to a hillside clearing in the shadow of the monastery. He said a precise count was difficult as bodies continued to trickle in and some had been taken away by family members.

Earlier, China Central Television reported that a 13-year-old Tibetan girl was pulled from the toppled two-storey Minzu Hotel yesterday after a sniffer dog alerted rescuers to her location. Changli Maomu's condition was good and she was taken to a medical station for treatment.

Relief workers have estimated that 70-90 per cent of the town's wood-and-mud houses collapsed when the earthquakes hit Yushu county, in the western province of Qinghai, on Wednesday.