Good response to quake appeal - but more needed

Vital relief supplies are still lacking in Xinjiang villages and townships devastated by Monday's earthquake, the Red Cross Society of China says, but donations are flooding in from all over the country.

The Red Cross has so far received cash donations of 5.73 million yuan (HK$5.3 million) and an estimated 3.4 million yuan worth of relief supplies such as clothes.

At least 266 people were killed in the earthquake, which measured 6.8 on the Richter scale. Tens of thousands of houses, schools and even hospitals collapsed in the quake and the hundreds of aftershocks that followed, leaving thousands of victims homeless and penniless.

An official with Red Cross' emergency rescue division said several thousand tents were still required.

'We do not know when we will get all the tents we need,' she said. 'The government is still looking for more.

'The situation in the affected areas is generally stable at the moment, but there is still a food shortage.'

While donations from across the mainland have been adding up, relief agencies in Hong Kong say the response has so far been lukewarm.