A VILLAGER SLEEPS OUTSIDE HIS DESTROYED HOME IN QIONGKU'ERQIAKE, 2003-02-26 (photo)

A villager sleeps in near-freezing temperatures outside his destroyed home Qiongkuer Qiake township, in Bachu county of China's remote Xinjiang region February 26, 2003. A devastating earthquake shook western China Monday, killing more than 266 people, injuring more than 4,000 and flattening homes, schools and other buildings near the Silk Road oasis of Kashgar. Some 240 of the dead were from this village. Soldiers and rescue workers combed the rubble for injured and dead from the mid-morning quake, which at 6.8 on the Richter scale was the worst to strike the Xinjiang region in five decades. Pictures of the Year 2003 REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV CC/PB