Rescue after China quake slowed by lack of supplies

JIEGU, China - Earthquake survivors shivered through a second night outdoors in a remote Tibetan corner of western China with rescuers fighting altitude sickness and dealing with a lack of supplies as the death toll rose to 760.

People with broken limbs cried in pain as medical teams could offer little more than injections. A doctor at the Qinghai provincial hospital, where the severely injured were being flown, said there was no time to count the injured.

Stunned survivors wandered the dusty streets of Jiegu, where relief workers estimated 70 percent to 90 percent of the low-slung town of wood-and-mud housing had collapsed. Hundreds gathered to sleep in a plaza around a 50-foot-tall statue of the mythical Tibetan King Gesar, wrapped in blankets taken from homes shattered by Wednesday morning's quakes. "There's nothing to eat. We've just been drinking water," said Zhaxi Zuoma, 32, camped with thousands of others on a rocky field. They asked a reporter to bring them food the next day.

Xinhua News Agency said 760 people had died, 243 people were missing, and 11,477 were injured, 1,174 severely. The worst of the quakes measured magnitude 6.9 by the U.S. Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration.

Rescue vehicles snaked along the 12-hour drive from the provincial capital into the region, still trembling with aftershocks. - AP