BEIJING, CHINA - THE Malaysian Consulate in Kunming has sought the help of the Sichuan local government to trace a group of 26 Malaysian tourists who have not been contactable since Monday's massive earthquake that hit south-western Sichuan province.

'The Chinese authorities set up a special team this morning to look for foreign tourists. We are working with them on this,' Consul-General Ayauf Bachi told Bernama on Wednesday.

He said the consulate was contacted on Tuesday by Ipoh-based Golden Dragon Tours, which had arranged the trip for the mostly women group, half of whom were elderly. The oldest in the group is believed to be in her nineties.

The Malaysian tourists arrived in Sichuan on May 8 and was supposed to depart for home on May 16. They had visited Jiuzhaiguo, a Unesco-listed nature reserve, and had stopped over in Maoxian for lunch, their last known whereabout.

Maoxian lies less than 50km from Wenchuan, the epicentre of the 7.8 magnitude quake.

19 UK tourists missing

A group of 19 British tourists remains missing in the Chinese region devastated by a massive earthquake this week, the British Foreign Office and a travel company said on Wednesday in London.

The holidaymakers were travelling by coach Monday from Chengdu to Wolong in Wenchuan county in Sichuan province when the 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck. They were accompanied by a local guide and driver.

'We are doing everything we can to know where these 19 Britons are,' a Foreign Office spokesman told AFP, while adding that there were no confirmed British casualties from the quake.

TAIWANESE DEATHS

Two Taiwanese, including a three-year-old boy, were killed by the quake and 14 others could not be contacted in southwest China, officials and media said on Wednesday.

Tourist Wang Min-chuan, 56, fell to his death on Tuesday as he was being rescued from a cable car stranded in mid-air over Dujiangyan, Sichuan province, since the quake struck on Monday, an official at the Strait Exchange Foundation (SEF) said here.

Ten other people who were also trapped in the 50m high cable car system were brought to safety.

Meanwhile, a group of 14 Taiwanese tourists travelling in Sichuan could not be contacted, he added. The semi-official SEF is in charge of civilian exchanges with the mainland in the absence of official contacts between Beijing and Taipei.

According to Chinese state media, a three-year-old Taiwanese boy was also killed while two others were slightly injured in the quake.- AFP