Rescuers have ended a joint Russian-Chinese search for the last of six Russian tourists who participated in an ill-fated canoeing trip in northwest China.

Chinese and Russian search and rescue experts met in Hotan City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, yesterday evening, where they agreed to end the 16-day search for Dmitry Tishchenko.

They said they had found no signs of more survivors in the area of the Yurungkax River, on which the canoeing expedition took place.

Tishchenko would be officially registered as "missing" and the Chinese rescuers would continue land searches for him, they agreed.

China contributed three helicopters and 40,000 people to the search. Russia sent 40 rescuers to participate in the operation.

The six Russian tourists failed to show up to meet their Chinese interpreter in Hotan as scheduled on Sepember. 2 after they set out on the Yurungkax River in southern Xinjiang in mid-August.

The rescuers have found only two survivors, Alexander Zverev and Andrey Pautov, and discovered the bodies of three men: Sergey Chernik, 47, and Ivan Chernik, 25, who were father and son, and Vladimir Smetannikov, 25.

(Xinhua News Agency September 27, 2007)