**Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has spurred on rescuers working in the Qinghai quake zone as hungry survivors spent a second night in the cold.**Touring Yushu county, the remote Tibetan mountain area at the epicentre, he reminded them that the first 72 hours were critical for their work.
“Never give up, even if the hope is very faint,” he said.
Officially, about 760 people died and 243 are missing but local people say they believe the toll is much higher.
China also says that 11,477 people were injured by the 6.9 quake.
With an estimated 15,000 houses destroyed in Yushu, thousands of homeless people and casualties have been waiting for help.
Heavy lifting equipment has begun to trickle into the area after being brought in by road from hundreds of kilometres away, and food, tents and medical supplies are arriving too.
Chinese President Hu Jintao announced he was cutting short his attendence at the Bric (Brazil, Russia, India and China) summit in Brazil to return home because of the “huge calamity”.
‘We have nothing’
Among the challenges facing the rescuers in Yushu, a Tibetan region which sits at about 4,000m (13,000ft), are freezing weather, high altitude and thin air.
The quake, which struck on Wednesday morning at the shallow depth of 10km (six miles), knocked out phone and power lines, and triggered landslides, blocking vital roads.
“Rescuing people is the most important,” Mr Wen was shown on Chinese TV telling rescuers.
“We should spare no efforts to save people… especially within 72 hours, please try as hard as possible.”
A distraught ethnic Tibetan woman who gave her name as Sonaman told AFP news agency she had “lost everything”.
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,” she said.
“It’s been flattened. My family lost 10 people. We have nothing. We have nothing to eat.”
‘Thousand dead’
At a foothill under the main monastery of Jiegu township, monks chanted Tibetan Buddhist mantras in front of piles of dead, Reuters news agency reports.
Some helped residents look for kin among what appeared to be hundreds of bodies, collected on a covered platform, the agency says.
“I’d say we’ve collected a thousand or more bodies here,” said Lopu, a monk clad in maroon robes.
“Some we found ourselves, some were sent to us.”
Some local Tibetans told Reuters they did not believe the official death toll estimate of 760, saying many more had died without being officially counted.
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