JISHISHAN, China, Dec 21, 2023 (AFP) - Chinese authorities are facing a "race
against time" to ensure victims of the deadliest earthquake in years can be
sheltered from freezing winter temperatures, a local official told AFP on
Thursday.

The quake, which struck just before midnight on Monday on the border between
northwestern Gansu and Qinghai provinces, killed at least 135 people.

The crippling December weather has made the aid operation even more
challenging.

"Right now, it's a race against time to meet the needs of the population as
quickly as possible, so that people can spend a warm winter in complete
safety," Zhou Yongfeng, an official from Gansu's Jishishan county, told AFP.

Swathes of China are experiencing record-breaking cold temperatures, with
authorities putting much of the country on alert.

AFP reporters saw survivors huddling around fires to keep warm, and the
government has issued thousands of blue tents to replace improvised shelters
built by residents immediately after the quake.

A huge logistics operation has unfolded over the past three days, AFP saw,
with thousands of relief workers setting up shelter, food and other
facilities for the displaced.

Zhou, who works in Liugou -- a township of about 2,500 households near the
epicentre of the quake -- told AFP that resettlement was a problem.

"Makeshift tents are not a long-term approach... But as winters are too cold
in northern China, it's not possible to rebuild directly after the disaster,"
she said.

"Work can only start in the spring of next year."

- Liquefied soil -

Almost 1,000 were injured across the two provinces after the shallow tremor,
measured at 5.9 by the US Geological Survey, struck.

The death toll rose on Thursday, state news agency Xinhua said, as rescuers
continued to search for victims buried alive on Tuesday in Zhongchuan
township in Qinghai.

Twelve people there remain missing after a "sand boil" -- a phenomenon that
can occur during an earthquake when soil liquefies and forces sand and water
out of the ground -- according to Xinhua.

The quake was China's deadliest since 2014, when more than 600 people were
killed in southwestern Yunnan province.

At the Jishishan County People's Hospital in Gansu, doctors attended to
survivors with mild injuries on Thursday, administering intravenous drips and
examining X-rays.

The hospital buildings themselves had been visibly damaged by the quake.

"I really want to go home," one patient, a middle-aged woman waiting to
receive surgery on her injured leg, told AFP.

"But my place has been destroyed, so I wonder where I can go," she said.

"People are still worried about the aftershocks," another Jishishan county
official told AFP.

"They can't sleep well because there is no safe place."