BEIJING (AP)01/26-- An early and heavy snowfall has killed 13 people and 51,000 head of livestock in a high mountain valley inhabited mainly by Tibetans, China Business Times reported Friday.

More than three feet of snow has fallen in Shiqu county since the storms began in mid-December, about a month earlier than usual, the newspaper said. Temperatures have plunged as low as minus-40 and even the highs have been below-zero.

In addition to the dead, 56 people were seriously injured, more than 1,000 suffered from snow blindness and 11,000 -- one out of every six residents in the county -- had frostbite.

Shiqu is in Sichuan province 1,000 miles southwest of Beijing in the series of mountains east of the Tibetan plateau. Average elevation in the county is more than 13,000 feet above sea level.