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MIANYANG, China - A military helicopter crashed while evacuating injured survivors of China's earthquake, state media said Sunday, underlining the lingering risks of a disaster that has killed more than 69,000.
The Mi-171 chopper crashed Saturday amid fog and strong turbulence as its crew of five was evacuating 14 injured residents from devastated areas of southwestern Sichuan province, state-run Xinhua news agency said.
No information on casualties was given, but Xinhua said late Sunday the helicopter was still missing and no one onboard had been found.
The rescue effort, which involves troops on the ground and two helicopters, was difficult since the crash site was among canyons surrounded by mountains, Xinhua said, citing military sources.
President Hu Jintao has ordered local authorities to conduct search and rescue operations, Xinhua said, later adding that the military was expanding the effort.
The crash highlights the ongoing challenges China faces as it seeks to respond to a tragedy that has also left about 15 million people homeless and raised fears of disease outbreaks in affected areas.
The helicopter had ferried a team of military medical experts to Li county and was returning with the injured residents when it lost contact with ground command, Xinhua reported.
The death toll from the quake, China's worst disaster in a generation, rose to 69,016 on Sunday, with another 18,830 still missing, the government said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Chinese waited anxiously for the start of drainage work on a menacing lake created by the May 12 quake.
Army and police crews who had toiled for a week to dig a diversion channel for the Tangjiashan "quake lake" wrapped up late Saturday and authorities said the rising waters could begin spilling into the channel as early as Sunday.
The lake, formed when a huge landslide blocked the Jian River, has emerged as the most serious lingering threat to the region's traumatised citizens, as it poses a flood risk to areas populated by more than one million people.
State television had said earlier that plans to use explosives to breach the lake had been abandoned amid fears such a blast could destabilise the rubble.
Still, more than 197,000 people have been evacuated in case the controlled water drainage turns into a flood, officials told AFP, with more than a million others on standby.
"About 1.3 million people are prepared for evacuation," a disaster relief official in Mianyang city, downstream from the lake, told AFP on Saturday.
"If the water drainage goes as planned peacefully, they won't have to," said the official, who gave only the surname Pu.
Officials have expressed confidence that the risk of a disastrous flood was now remote.
"The lake problem is under control -- we do not have any fears there will be an uncontrollable flood," said Han Guijun, a top official in quake-devastated Beichuan county.
There are about three dozen such lakes in Sichuan, 28 of which were at risk of bursting, Xinhua reported earlier.
Children's Day, normally a joyous occasion in China, was bittersweet this year -- coloured by sadness and anger for many in the region who lost children in the disaster.
In the town of Wufu, residents gathered Sunday to mark the occasion at the remains of a school, its rubble decorated with framed photographs of dead children.
"This is all because of corruption! They didn't spend enough on the school and now our children are dead," shouted one man, the grandfather of a child killed when the school collapsed.
"Why can't they build better schools? The politicians are corrupt!" he said.
An estimated 7,000 schools collapsed in the quake, killing more than 11,000 children and teachers. The disaster has sparked accusations that corruption was to blame for shoddy school construction.
China has vowed to investigate such charges.
But in the nearby town of Leigu, the focus was on the youngsters who survived, many now orphaned.
"We have to do everything we can to bring love and happiness to the children," Huo Jun, the principal of a Leigu kindergarten, told AFP.
"The psychological scars brought on by the earthquake are huge, but we can overcome them."
- AFP /ls
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