YUSHU, Qinghai - Construction workers have started rebuilding 86 Tibetan monasteries damaged in last year's 7.1-magnitude earthquake that leveled the plateau county of Yushu in Northwest China, local authorities said Saturday.

Officials of Yushu Tibet autonomous prefecture said the reconstruction of the worst-hit Trangu monastery is expected to be completed in November. The 700-year-old famed Trangu housed 3,000 Buddha busts and tens of thousands of Buddhism scripts.

Eighty-seven monasteries were damaged, ten of which were reduced to rubble, after the devastating earthquake that struck Yushu on April 14, 2010, killing nearly 2,700 people in the predominantly Tibetan region with a population of 350,000.