BEIJING, Feb. 4 (Reuter) - The deadliest earthquake to hit China in eight years has killed 240 people, injured 14,000 and left hundreds of thousands of homeless huddled in freezing weather and jolted by aftershocks, officials said Sunday.

The Red Cross Society of China appealed for international aid, saying it had informed the International Red Cross and sent five medical teams and $108,000 worth of food, clothes, medicines and quilts to victims.

More than 2,000 People's Liberation Army troops were helping to dig out survivors in remote mountain villages near the epicenter of the tremor in the scenic Lijiang region, 1,300 miles southwest of Beijing.

The tremor, which measured 7.0 on the Richter scale and struck on Saturday evening when most people were at home for supper or watching television, devastated a dozen townships and obliterated several villages, an official at the Lijiang disaster coordination center said by telephone. The death toll climbed to 240 late Sunday as rescue teams fanned out into worst-hit villages in search of survivors amid fears the final death toll could rise over 300, he said.

"Rescue teams expect to find only seriously injured people and the bodies of the dead now," the official said.

More than 3,800 people were seriously injured and 10,000 were slightly hurt, he said. "We are really in need of blood and medical instruments and medicines to fight colds and flu."

A foreign tourist, his name and nationality not immediately known, was seriously injured, Xinhua news agency said.

Army helicopters were airlifting the most seriously injured to hospitals elsewhere in Yunnan province and flying in food and tents. All surrounding hospitals were full.

"We don't have enough tents for people whose houses have collapsed or who are too afraid to go home," the official said. "It is cold. It's about three degrees C (27 degrees F) below freezing tonight and we're afraid many people will catch flu."

More than 186,000 houses have collapsed and officials estimated about 300,000 people were affected. The region, sparsely populated by Chinese standards, has a total population of about 1.5 million.

Several teams of several hundred doctors and nurses have been sent to the rugged area of southwestern Yunnan province that is renowned for the beauty of its scenery, with tiny ancient villages of the Naxi ethnic minority nestling at the foot of Lijiang's snow-capped Jade Dragon Snow Mountain.

Squads of soldiers and police searched for survivors, picking through rubble of fragile mud-brick homes that had crumbled, crushing their inhabitants, officials said.

One rescue team leader was killed when a house from which he had just pulled two injured children fell in and buried him.

Officials described the earthquake as terrifying. "This is Lijiang's worst earthquake since 1474," one said. Foreign tourists were evacuated from their hotels and spent the night around bonfires in the city square.

More than 180 aftershocks have been recorded, including 18 measuring more than 4.0 that caused more damage, officials said. Bigger aftershocks were expected, they warned.

"Most people are still outside, only a small number have gone home," the official said. "They are too scared."

Buildings of reinforced concrete suffered cracks and many wooden and brick homes were damaged. "The worst-hit were the mud-brick houses. They just collapsed," he said.

China's most serious earthquake in recent years was in Yunnan in 1988, when a tremor measuring 7.6 killed 939 people near the border with Burma.

The most recent tremor in Yunnan, which lies on a major fault line, was an earthquake of 6.5 that rocked an area near the provincial capital, Kunming, last October, killing 44.