The death toll from the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province and its neighboring region stood at 69,197 as of Saturday noon, the State Council Information Office said in a statement.

The number of people listed as missing and injured also remain unchanged compared with that of Friday, standing at 18,222 and 374,176 respectively.

As of Saturday noon, more than 1.48 million quake-affected people have been relocated.

Among the 96,449 hospitalized for injury, 90,365 had been discharged, while 3,431 people remained under care, the statement said.

The government disaster relief fund had topped 61.5 billion yuan (about 9.04 billion U.S. dollars), including 55.1 billion yuan from the central budget and 6.4 billion yuan from the local budget.

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, domestic and foreign donations had reached 58 billion yuan in cash and goods by Saturday noon. Of this, 22.1 billion yuan had been forwarded to quake-hit areas.

About 1.58 million tents, 4.87 million quilts, 14.1 million garments, 2.14 million tonnes of fuel oil and 4.58 million tonnes of coal had been sent to the quake-hit areas, it said.

As of Saturday noon, relief workers had built 538,000 temporary houses and another 15,000 were being installed. Materials for 32,500 of the shelters had arrived in the affected areas.

In the 24 hours ending Saturday noon, 203 aftershocks at or below magnitude 3.9 were monitored in the quake zone, according to the China Earthquake Administration.

A total of 18,690 aftershocks had been detected since May 12.

A total of 258,381 tonnes of grain and 8,910 tonnes of edible oil have been allocated to the quake zones from central reserves as of Friday, the statement said.

As of 10:00 p.m. Friday, 136,172 quake-affected people had been organized to work outside of the quake zone, while another 616,841 people had found job in their hometown.

(Xinhua News Agency July 20, 2008)