Desperate and destitute, the people of the quake-hit village of Xinshi in the mountains of southwest China camp under tatty bivouacs in front of ruined homes, grumbling that their government has forsaken them.

Three days after the 7.9 magnitude quake rocked Sichuan province on Monday, killing at least 50,000 people, China has pushed 130,000 troops and paramilitary police into stricken areas to distribute aid and search for survivors amid countless shattered communities.

The massive relief operation, however, has hardly touched Xinshi, though it lies only 30 minutes down a rutted track from a highway on which military convoys carrying supplies thunder towards more hopeless areas. ?We have no money to survive, we couldn?t buy anything anyway. What will we do about our children?? complained Zhang Fuyang, standing outside her makeshift shelter cobbled together from plastic sheeting and a basic wooden frame.

Xinshi, a small farming community ringed by sheer, mist-covered mountains, is just one of hundreds of villages reduced to ruin in the valleys of northern Sichuan.

Many remain cut off by landslides and broken roads, delaying the arrival of aid and leaving bereft residents feeling abandoned. ?Some soldiers went through here yesterday. We?ve not seen anybody since,? said Zhang Gongchuang, as his wife slept under a tent and children played cards.

?We want to survive?

In the same building as Zhang?s damaged home was an empty medical clinic. No-one was sure how many people had died. ?We?ve had no medical staff here since my father died,? Zhang said. ?We have no power, and we don?t know when we will get it back.?

As the hopes of survival dimmed for an estimated 25,000 people still buried under toppled buildings across the region yesterday, China?s Communist Party leadership has ordered officials to ?ensure social stability? amid growing frustration from tens of thousands of homeless survivors.

Lining the highway to Beichuan county, where more than 7,000 have died, desperate villagers were holding up signs made from ripped cardboard at military trucks driving past, saying: ?We?ve nowhere to live. We want to survive.? Volunteers who pulled over to hand out bottles of water and basic food were mobbed.

Further down the road in Anchang, however, food was being sold on the streets. State radio has appealed to quake refugees not to drink unsafe water and not to steal relief supplies.

Zhang Gongchuang, surveying the wreckage of his home, had other concerns. ?Even if we have food, how could we prepare it? We have no knives. How can we eat?? he asked.

GIRL?S LEGS AMPUTATED TO FREE HER FROM RUBBLE

Chinese doctors amputated a teenage girl?s crushed legs yesterday, the only way they could pull her alive from the wreckage of her school three days after an earthquake flattened swathes of the country?s southwest. Yang Liu was trapped in what appeared to be a doorway by the massive quake, near the top of a massive pile of bricks and concrete. Her position likely saved her life. Moments after the hasty, on-site surgery took place, doctors carried her down the hill of rubble, before speeding off in a waiting ambulance to hospital in the nearby city of Deyang. «We saved her,» said one of the doctors involved, walking away from the site still wearing a face mask and with a stethoscope around his neck. «Her condition is still quite precarious.»