Dingri copes with aftermath thanks to rescuers

Collective effort calms frayed nerves in disaster-affected villages of Xizang autonomous region

His face covered by dust and sweat, his fingernails bloodied and dirty, police officer Dondrub Tsering dug through the debris of fallen buildings with his bare hands to hunt for survivors after a magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Dingri county in the Xizang autonomous region on Tuesday morning.

The police officer and his colleagues arrived at one of the worst hit villages within half an hour of the quake. By sunset, they had dug out 17 survivors. By 10 am the next morning, 407 people had been rescued from the area, local authorities said.

Located at an altitude of 4,500 meters, Dingri hosts the base camp of Mount Qomolangma, the world's highest peak, also known as Mount Everest in the West. Home to over 60,000 residents, it is one of the most populous border counties in Xizang.

Hong Li, head of the Xizang Emergency Management Department, said the earthquake, the severest in five years, had killed 126 people, injured 337 and felled 3,609 houses.

As many as 1,211 aftershocks were recorded, with the strongest one of 4.4 magnitude occurring approximately 18 kilometers from Lhasa block in the southern part of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which was the epicenter of the quake.

According to Hong Li, the quake hit a high altitude and low temperature area that was economically backward with poor transportation and telecommunication links and power supply.

With temperatures dropping considerably at night, a total of 428,000 urgently needed items such as quilts, blankets, coats, stoves and instant noodles had been shipped to the disaster area, he said.