By Mark McDonald

HONG KONG: In China's first official acknowledgment of the scope of children's deaths in the massive Sichuan earthquake in May, a senior government official said Friday that more than 19,000 children had perished.

The 7.9 magnitude quake left more than 88,000 people dead or missing, and it was widely known - largely through the protests of grieving parents - that many of the dead were schoolchildren.

Parents have complained bitterly about the shoddy construction of school buildings, the use of inferior materials and official corruption.

The government has attempted to stifle the outcry by deploying riot police to break up public protests and by offering payments to parents who have filed court suits against local and provincial officials.

At a press conference Friday in Beijing, news agencies said Wei Hong, the executive vice governor of Sichuan, the province hit hardest by the quake, said the children's death toll was 19,065. He noted that the toll was incomplete and that officials were still tallying the final numbers.

Ma Zongjin, chairman of an official damage-assessment committee, said in September that more than 1,000 schools had suffered from poor construction or being built on fault lines.

"Recently, we've built school buildings relatively fast," Ma said, "so some construction problems might exist."

Beijing has put the total direct financial loss from the earthquake at $123 billion.

Meanwhile, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said Friday that an official in the quake-battered city of Mianyang had committed suicide by jumping out of a window on the 15th floor of a downtown hotel.

He Zonghua, 40, director of the city's human resources and training department, had lately been suffering from depression, Xinhua said, noting that He lost no friends or relatives in the quake.

Dong Yufei, the director of the county's disaster relief office in Mianyang killed himself last month due to depression and stress. He hanged himself in a temporary office.

Xinhua said that Dong, who lost his 12-year-old son and other relatives in the quake, left a suicide note that read: "I feel too much pressure from life and work every day. I cannot hold on any further. And I just want a good rest."