YUSHU, China – Tibetans mourned dead relatives Friday from an earthquake that killed nearly 800 people in remote western China, as rescue crews found a handful of survivors and homeless residents complained of aid delays. The official death toll from the quake that flattened much of the town of Gyegu climbed to 791, though some local people cast doubt on that figure, saying many more had died without being counted. Estimates by NGOs support a figure of about 1,000 dead. Survivors of Wednesday's tremor spent another night huddled under quilts and in tents, while doctors struggled to treat the wounded in a makeshift medical center. In one Tibetan neighborhood on the outskirts of Gyegu, police moved in to break up an angry crowd waiting for tents to be unloaded from a truck. Cuona Laji, a wizened 67-year-old woman treated as a village elder by the residents, said the locals believed that people with political influence were getting more than their fair share of tents and other supplies. She entreated people not to break out into fighting. "We need food, fuel, tents and water and there's not enough yet," she told Reuters. "When people are so desperate, they feel especially angry if things aren't shared fairly." Some survivors said they saw tents being taken away by people who were not from the quake-hit county of Yushu. "The thing is that some people who were not affected by the quake are taking away and stealing our tents. Those people who came later today were not able to get any tents," said 32-year-old quake survivor Suona Minju. "They are experiencing hardship in their family, some of their kin died, they have no kitchen to cook, they have no tents and they have no homes." But in Beijing, Miao Chonggang, deputy director of quake relief at the China Earthquake Administration, said he had not heard of such problems. "We do not have any knowledge of unfair distribution of aid materials," he told a news conference, adding that relief work had been carried out "in an orderly manner."
