Chinese air force has shipped more than 700 tons of relief material to victims hit by the worst winter disaster in five decades, said the military source on Friday.

The air force sent 10 transporters to carry out more than 50 tasks since Jan. 30, the military source said.

On Thursday, two transporters flew 12 hours with about 69 tons of relief material on board from central Henan Province to southeastern Fujian Province, the source said.

Chinese armed force have played a key role in disaster relief when half of the country are suffering the winter chaos caused by freezing weather, heavy snow and icy rain.

By Thursday, 610,000 soldiers and armed police and 1.84 million paramilitary forces had been engaged in disaster relief.

With the joint efforts by the military and civil departments, the disaster-affected regions are slowly recovering.

All affected airports reopened Friday and electricity was partly or fully restored to 164 snow-stricken counties Wednesday, including Chenzhou city in Hunan Province which had suffered blackout for about two weeks.

The Ministry of Communications said Friday that the coal storage at coal-fired power plants in disaster-affected regions has rebounded to normal level thanks to increased trans-shipments from coal-rich northern regions.

About 16.34 million tons of coal has been shipped from four major ports in the north between Jan. 25 and Feb. 7, up 29 percent over the same period last year.

The weather department predicted sunny weather and higher temperatures in next two days in disaster-hit regions but warned that melting snow could lead to a new round of problems.

(Xinhua News Agency February 9, 2008)