Search and rescue work has ended in China's Himalayan region following this month's deadly 6.9-magnitude earthquake, with the government urging greater reconstruction efforts, state media said Sunday.
"The focus should now be shifted from searching for quake victims and treating the injured… to resettling survivors, restoring social order and carrying out reconstruction," Xinhua news agency quoted Vice Premier Hui Liangyu as saying.
The search for survivors and the missing amid the debris of tens of thousands of flattened homes ended on Saturday, 10 days after the quake struck, the report said.
Hui, the latest leader to visit the remote quake-hit region in the northwestern province of Qinghai, urged the Tibetan community to resume commercial and government work and draw up plans for reconstruction as soon as possible, Xinhua said.
The death toll from the quake has risen to 2,203, with 73 people still missing and more than 12,000 injured, the report said.
On Friday, the government urged Tibetan monks who had rushed to the disaster zone to help rescue efforts to return to their monasteries to avoid hindering relief operations.
"While fully recognising the positive contributions of the monks that came from other areas, we suggested to them that they return to their monasteries to ensure the high effectiveness and order of quake relief work," the government said in a statement.
The region's lamas and monks remain a point of concern for Beijing following bloody anti-Chinese unrest across the region in 2008 that stemmed from initial peaceful protests by monks in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
Monks in the quake zone openly expressed to AFP journalists their loyalty to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader blamed by China for instigating the 2008 unrest. He denies the charge.
On Saturday, Hui praised the relief and rescue efforts of the monks, while the Chinese government promised to repair monasteries that were damaged.
Business activities in the hardest-hit town of Jiegu were returning to normal, Xinhua said, with grocery stores reopened, and post offices and banks gearing up for operations.
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