Japan shares satellite images of China quake areas

BEIJING, May 14 -- Japan has provided China with satellite images of the area devastated by a huge earthquake that struck earlier this week, the first from space of the disaster zone, state media reported Wednesday.

Chinese specialists were analysing the images from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in a bid to assess the scale of the damage, Xinhua news agency reported.

China was also hoping to receive images from the United States, France and Canada under an international agreement for sharing satellite data following major disasters, the report said.

Canada has agreed to schedule a flyover on Friday, according to a report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post.

The report said that Chinese satellites had taken some pictures, but their quality was too poor to be useful.

"Like every ordinary Chinese, we are desperate to see what has happened down there and what is going on right now," a researcher with China's Remote Sensing Satellite Ground Station said, according to the Post.

"But there was a cloud right above Wenchuan so huge and thick that neither our camera nor infra-red devices could penetrate."

Japan and China have long endured a tense relationship, but tensions have eased recently, with Chinese President Hu Jintao making the first visit to Tokyo by a head of state in 10 years last week.

The 7.9-magnitude quake devastated parts of southwest China on Monday, with Sichuan province the worst-hit area.

The earthquake, China's worst in three decades, has left at least 20,000 dead but the toll looked set to rise once the scale of the disaster in cut-off communities such as Wenchuan became clear.

(Agencies)