China rushes to fix telecommunications in Tibet

BEIJING - China has dispatched 158 engineers to Tibet in order to restore telecommunication facilities destroyed by Saturday's earthquake, said a statement on Monday.

Some parts of China's Tibet Autonomous Region, adjacent to Nepal, were affected by Saturday's earthquake and its aftershocks.

158 engineers and 52 vehicles have been mobilized to fix the 47 base stations used for wireless communications which were out of service following the earthquake, said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) statement.

The base stations are scattered across four counties in the Xigaze district of Tibet, according to the MIIT, accounting for about 12 percent of the total in the affected area.

So far, 20 of them have been restored thanks to the engineers' efforts, said the statement.

Rescuers braved heavy snow and rain to reach the affected area. Their efforts were hampered by severe landslides on the road to Nyalam. The snow is expected to stop on Monday, according to a forecast by the National Meteorological Center.

Following the Nepal earthquake, Xigaze was struck by a 5.9-magnitude earthquake at 5:17 pm local time Saturday and a 5.3-magnitude earthquake shook Nyalam County at 1:42 am Sunday, according to the China Earthquake Networks Center. The death toll in Tibet stands at 20, local authorities said on Monday. A total of 58 people were injured and about 24,800 have been evacuated.

China's National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic planner, has granted an emergency investment of 30 million yuan ($4.9 million) on Sunday to support the restoration of public facilities and infrastructure in the Tibetan areas affected by the earthquake.