Rescuers Appeal for Tents After Deadly China Quake

BEIJING - China appealed for tents and rushed relief supplies Monday to a mountainous corner of Sichuan province, where a magnitude-6.1 earthquake killed at least 38 people in the same region still struggling to recover from May's catastrophic quake.

Saturday's quake struck near the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, toppling thousands of homes and forcing more than 150,000 people from their villages, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.

Rescue teams hiked into remote valleys cut off by landslides, and the army air-dropped food and blankets. Rain overnight turned to misery for families sleeping in the open, prompting the urgent appeal for 100,000 tents.

The disaster is a painful echo of the May 12 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people in Sichuan — many of them children crushed in shoddily built schools — and left up to 5 million homeless.

Many survivors of the May quake are still living in prefabricated temporary housing as winter approaches. Officials have promised reconstruction will be complete within three years.

The latest quake came eight days after Beijing's triumphant Olympic closing ceremony, and state media gave the rescue effort prominent coverage, as they did in May.

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Associated Press writers contributed to this report.

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