Above: Local residents search for their belongings in the debris of a collapsed house after an earthquake in Dujiangyan, Sichuan province May 12, 2008, in this picture distributed by China's official Xinhua News Agency.
REUTERS/Xinhua/Chen Xie
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Nearly 10,000 people were killed by the earthquake that hammered southwest China, officials said on Tuesday as rescuers struggled to reach the worst-hit areas where many more may have died.
Rescuers worked frantically through the night, pulling bodies from schools, homes, factories and hospitals demolished by the 7.9 magnitude quake, which rolled from a mountainous area of Sichuan province across much of China on Monday afternoon.
The toll from China's worst earthquake in more than three decades appeared sure to climb as troops struggled on foot to reach the worst-hit area, Wenchuan, a hilly county of 112,000 people 100 km (62 miles) from Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu.
About 900 teenagers were buried under a collapsed three-storey school building in the Sichuan city of Dujiangyan.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed there, bowed three times in grief before some of the 50 bodies already pulled out, Xinhua news agency reported.
"Not one minute can be wasted," said Wen, a trained geologist. "One minute, one second could mean a child's life."
At a second school in Dujiangyan, fewer than 100 of 420 students survived, Xinhua reported.
The U.S. Geological Survey upgraded the initial tremor to magnitude 7.9, followed by a series of aftershocks, which residents said shook the area throughout the night.
"Some are still very strong," said a Dujiangyan resident reached by telephone. "We have put up tents outside to sleep in."
China's Communist Party leadership announced that coping with the devastating quake, and ensuring that it did not threaten social stability, was now the government's top priority.
"Time is life," said an official announcement from the Communist Party Standing Committee. "Make fighting the earthquake and rescue work the current top task."
Officials must speed food, water, medicine and other necessities to quake-stricken areas, the meeting ordered, adding that officials must also keep a grip on social stability.
"Strengthen positive guidance of opinion," the meeting urged, warning against the spread of rumors.
The Sichuan quake was the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan tremor in northeastern China where up to 300,000 died. Then, unlike now, the Communist Party kept a tight lid on information about the extent of the disaster.
SEVERED ROADS, RAIL LINES
Neighboring areas were also affected, with 150 reported dead in Longnan city of the northwestern province of Gansu and school collapses in the municipality of Chongqing.
In Chengdu, many residents slept outside or in cars as aftershocks were felt through the night in a city where at least 45 people died and 600 were injured.
Local radio broadcast appeals for people to leave their cars at home to make way for emergency vehicles.
"At this time of disaster, we are one family," radio said. "We are confident that under the leadership of the Party, families can be reunited and we can leave this nightmare."
The government has rushed troops and medical teams to dig for survivors and treat the injured through the region, where Xinhua said some half a million houses had collapsed.
But severed roads and rail lines blocked the way to Wenchuan, and local officials described crumpled houses, landslides and scenes of desperation.
"We are in urgent need of tents, food, medicine and satellite communications equipment," the Communist Party chief of Wenchuan, Wang Bin said, according to Xinhua.
There was no word from the three townships nearest the epicenter, which have a population of 24,000, the report said. Wenchuan has reported 15 dead, a number likely to rise steeply.
More than 7,000 may have died in Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, Sichuan television said. Beichuan has a population of 161,000, meaning about one in 10 there were killed or injured.
In Sichuan's Shifang, where the quake sparked a major chemical leak, about 600 people died and as many as 2,300 remained buried, Xinhua said. Two chemical plants collapsed, causing more than 80 metric tons of liquid ammonia to leak out.
"Even if it means walking in, we must enter the worst-hit areas as quickly as possible," Wen said, according to Xinhua.
But a paramilitary officer marching with a hundred troops towards Wenchuan described a devastated landscape that is likely to yield many dead and to frustrate rescuers.
"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," Xinhua quoted People's Armed Police officer Liu Zaiyuan as saying.
Below: Amateur video shows a student attempting to shelter from a powerful earthquake as it strikes southwest China.
The quake hit Sichuan province with its epicentre about 100 km (60 miles) from the provincial capital, Chengdu.
Source: Reuters
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