Chinese President Hu Jintao has voiced his gratitude for the international aid following Monday's massive earthquake. "I express heartfelt thanks to the foreign governments and international friends," Mr Hu was quoted as saying by the state-run Xinhua news agency. Offers of help in the relief effort from home and abroad have now surpassed $800m, Chinese officials say. The number of confirmed deaths of the quake in the south-western Sichuan province has now risen to 28,881. More than 10,600 people are believed to be still trapped, Xinhua said, citing regional officials. The final death toll following the 7.9-magnitude quake is expected to reach at least 50,000 people, Chinese officials estimate. Aftershocks Rescue efforts resumed in Beichuan, after the entire city was evacuated amid fears that it could be engulfed by a river bursting its banks.
The city - that lies near the epicentre of the quake - was reduced to ruins. But the search was halted on Saturday as rumours of a flood saw a stampede of people fleeing to higher ground. Several people were dug out of the rubble on Saturday, including a 31-year-old woman in Deyang city, and a 33-year-old miner in Shifang, both about 124 hours after being buried. The region shuddered again as a strong aftershock - measured by the US Geological Survey at 6.0 - struck at 0108 Sunday local time (1508 GMT Saturday). There have been hundreds of aftershocks since Monday's quake, some causing landslides which have made conditions even more difficult. Mass graves The Chinese government has organised a massive search and rescue effort. It released figures on Saturday demonstrating the scale of the operation. Advertisement
A woman found under the rubble some 124 hours after the quake It said 198,347 people had been recorded injured, not just in Sichuan, but in Gansu, Shaanxi, Chongqing, Hubei, Henan, and Guizhou provinces. It said some 181,460 tents, 220,000 quilts, and 170,000 cotton-padded garments had been despatched to the disaster area. Rescue teams from South Korea, Singapore and Russia have joined Japanese and Taiwanese experts taking part in the massive search.
The specialist teams are equipped with sniffer dogs, and fibre-optic cameras and heat sensors to detect people buried under the rubble. But experts say the chances of finding people alive are diminishing, and increasingly it is dead bodies which are being retrieved. The authorities have resorted to burying the bodies in mass graves. People in the quake zone are being told to wear face masks and disinfectant teams are out in force, even though the World Health Organisation says there is little significant risk of disease from unburied bodies. |
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