China has ordered the evacuation of 1.3 million people from the quake-hit Sichuan province to higher grounds for fear the rapidly swelling "quake lake" could burst.

As the quake toll passed 68,000, Tan Li, chief of Mianyang city quake control and relief headquarters, issued orders that the people living downstream of Tangjiashan, a dangerously swelling quake-created lake, must evacuate to higher grounds demarcated by government departments.

The lake formed by landslides that blocked the Jianjiang river after the quake. The risk of it breaching its bank worsened as downpours started in the area, driving the lake’s water level higher.

Tangjiashan, one of the 35 lakes created in the aftermath of the 8.0-magnitude quake of May 12 in the northwest, is inaccessible by road and can only be reached by foot or air.

Meanwhile, the quake’s death toll reached 68,858 Friday, the State Council said, and more than 18,000 people are missing.

The seismological observatory in Sichuan predicted that aftershocks would continue along the northern end of the Wenchuan-Beichuan-Qingchuan faultline in the coming days.

From Thursday noon to Friday noon, the region experienced 174 aftershocks that were monitored in southwest China’s quake zones.

The province has experienced more than 9,000 aftershocks to date, the strongest of 6.4 magnitude which killed eight people last week.

More than two weeks after the quake, relief teams rescued 6,541 people from the rubble and evacuated 764,788 to safety.

Authorities set up 3,400 temporary shelters and 664,500 tents have been sent to the quake areas.

Another 6,300 temporary shelters were being erected and 23,500 are being shipped to the quake regions as part of emergency measures to house some 45.55 million homeless.

Domestic and foreign donations stood at $5.7 billion, up $370 million since Thursday. About $1.5 billion in cash and goods had been forwarded to the disaster area.

Government disaster relief funds have hit $3.2 billion, up $212 million overnight. The fund included $2.6 billion from the central government and $612 million from local governments.

Zhai Panmao, deputy director of the prediction and disaster management centre, said Friday that China reported some abnormal weather conditions this spring in both temperature and precipitation.

The average temperature in the country since the beginning of this year stood at 11.2 degrees Celsius, the highest during this period since 1951.

Northern China, including the northeast, Xinjiang Uygur region, Mongolia, and Henan province, registered a notable increase in average temperature, rising by two to four degrees Celsius, Zhai said.

In terms of rainfall, he said China had recorded an average precipitation of 124.1 mm so far this year, down from the same period in the previous years