(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-13 17:14

URUMQI - A military helicopter with Chinese and Russian rescuers onboard continued on Thursday to search for six missing Russian tourists and two local guides in Northwest China's Xinjiang.

The helicopter started its fourth search at 9:50 am after canoes and clothes confirmed to have been abandoned by the six Russians were found on Wednesday during the third search mission.

The red canoes, clothing and iron bars used for fixing canoes were found in two separate sites along the upper reaches of the Yurungkax River in Hotan.

A local villager who had served as a guide to the missing Russians identified these articles as belonging to the tourists after he saw the photographs, the Hotan rescue headquarters said.

The six Russian tourists failed to show up to meet their Chinese interpreter in Hotan as scheduled on September 2 after they set off on a canoeing on the Yurungkax River in mid-August.

A Russian cargo-transport plane with 40 Russian search and rescue crew arrived in Hotan on Tuesday to join the search for the six Russian tourists.

A member of the Russian rescue crew said the missing Russians were "experienced canoeists" and he believed they went missing probably because they met with "technical problems".

The six Russians were identified as Vladimir Smetannikov, Sergey Chernik, Andrey Pautov, Dmitry Tishchenko, Ivan Chernik and Alexander Zverev, with the youngest aged 25 and the oldest 47.

Prior to the findings, around 1,100 Chinese armed police, herdsmen and farmers had been mobilized to search for them along the middle and lower reaches of the river, but they found no trace of them.