Beijing  - China has sacked a village official from the ruling Communist Party after he continued running his grocery store and ignored orders to join earthquake relief work, state media said on Monday.

Liu Dingxiang ran his store in Tuanjie village, in the badly hit Dujiangyan district of the south-western province of Sichuan, despite orders from the party for all officials to take part in relief and rescue work, the official Xinhua news agency said.

The behaviour of Liu and another official punished for avoiding relief work in Dujiangyan caused "bad social influence," the agency quoted party disciplinary investigators as saying.

"Instead of tending earthquake victims, Liu stayed managing his own grocery store after the disaster," investigators said.

The other official sacked for not joining relief work was Li Shu, a research official at the Dujiangyan city archives.

Xiao Rong, the deputy head of the city's civil affairs bureau, was also sacked for dereliction of duty in recording the number of casualties from last week's devastating earthquake.

Xiao was held responsible for a "miscount of casualty tallying in the city," the agency said without elaborating.

The earthquake killed more than 32,500 people, with at least 10,000 believed to be still buried in collapsed buildings and about five million left homeless. (dpa)