A foot of snow was dumped on the worst-hit Zhaosu county in Xinjiang near China's rugged border with Kazakhstan, making road travel treacherous and delaying the arrival of rescue staff from Yining City, 300 kilomteresmiles) away.

Temperatures plunged to minus 25 degrees Celsius.

"We sorely need fur coats, cotton shoes, caps and other winter clothes," said Zhang Yong, deputy division commander of the No. 4 agricultural division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC).

Zhang said 1,226 people, most of whom are ethnic Mongolians, were seriously affected during the quake measuring 6.1 on the Richter Scale that struck Monday morning in an area where seismic activity is common.

Ten people were killed, revised down from an earlier 11, while 26 were severely injured and 47 slightly injured, Xinhua said

More than 700 houses collapsed while another 140 were damaged.

Most of the casualties and damage was borne by the XPCC, a one-time military unit that transferred to civilian work in 1954.

Zhang said the division's rescue command headquarters had mobilized 700 workers to dig caves underground to provide shelter for the homeless but work was slowed by the low temperature.

The emergency food and clean water could "basically satisfy" people's needs, he added.

Local officials said more than 30 aftershocks had been felt.

Li Bo, an official with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said the government of Xinjiang had sent 1,000 tents and other necessities to the quake-hit area and that 5,414 of the 6,000 people affected had been resettled.

A local official in Zhaosu county, a mainly pastoral area populated by herdsmen, said the quake was so strong it was felt 80 kilometres (49 miles) away in the county's administrative centre.

Earthquakes regularly hit China's Tibetan plateau and Muslim-majority Xinjiang region.

Earlier this year, an earthquake in Xinjiang left more than 260 people dead and thousands more injured.

The worst earthquake in modern Chinese history happened on July 28, 1976, in the northern city of Tangshan when a quake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale killed some 242,000 people.

TERRA.WIRE