The death toll from a deadly earthquake in a remote part of western China has climbed to 1,944, state media said today.
Another 216 people are still missing following the quake, which hit Yushu county in Qinghai province on the Tibetan plateau on Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency said.
China’s president Hu Jintao flew to Yushu county yesterday to speed relief distribution.
"Saving life remains the first priority. We treasure every life and at the same time we should ensure victims regain a normal life," Mr Hu told Phoenix TV before visiting a classroom at a local orphanage.
Mr Hu visited the damaged Zhaxi Datong village outside Gyegu, Xinhua said. He cut short a South American trip to fly there.
Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on Saturday asked Beijing if he could also visit the site to comfort victims.
Tibetan monks have congregated from across the Tibetan plateau to help with relief work and to chant over the dead in the devoutly Buddhist region. They estimated they cremated more than 1,000 bodies on a grassy hillside outside Gyegu on Saturday.
Family members brought more wrapped bodies to hundreds of chanting monks yesteday. The sheer number has forced them to choose cremation over traditional "sky burials", in which vultures eat the dead.
While China is unlikely to allow a visit by the Dalai Lama, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising, Beijing appears to be slowly recognising the importance of the Buddhist response in this traditional Tibetan area.
Xinhua said the Beijing-backed Panchen Lama sent a donation and message to Tibetans in Yushu via the United Front, an arm of the Communist Party designed to reach out to non-Communists and other ethnic groups.
Premier Wen Jiabao visited a monastery on Friday and thanked monks for their work, foreign journalists in Yushu said, although state media did not report the visit.