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Photo taken on May 13, 2008 shows bodies in Dujiangyan city of southwest China's Sichuan Province. A major eathquake measuring 7.8 on Richter scale jolted Wenchuan County of Sichuan Province at 2:28 p.m. on Monday. (Xinhua/Hou Dawei) Photo Gallery>>> |
DUJIANGYAN, Sichuan, May 13 (Xinhua) -- More students
have been found buried at a school in Dujiangyan City, one of the worst-hit
cities in Sichuan, as rescue operations continue.
Officials in the Xiang'e Township middle school in
Dujiangyan, about 100 km from epicenter Wenchuan, said fewer than 100 students
out of 420 students survived after a powerful quake brought down a major
teaching buildings in the school.
Towards dawn, rescuers were disassembling the debris
to recover the bodies of students stuck in misshaped cement structures.
Bloodstains were seen at some of the distorted steel bars from the building.
The fresh reports added to an earlier account that
900 students were feared buried in building wreckages in the Juyuan Middle
School in Juyuan Township in Dujiangyan.
As of 3 a.m. on Tuesday, rescuers had recovered more
than 60 bodies.
More than 1,000 people, including armed policemen,
were rescuing the buried victims. Eight excavators and five cranes were brought
in for rescue work and an ambulance waited.
The 7.8-magnitude quake, which struck Sichuan at 2:28
p.m. on Monday, has left more than 8,500 people dead in Sichuan. Severe
casualties were also reported in neighboring provinces.
The Chinese government launched emergency rescue
operations in the quake-jolted zones. Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu on
Monday afternoon and is in Dujiangyan to direct the rescue work.
China's Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of
Finance have allocated 200 million yuan (about 28.6 million U.S. dollars) for
disaster relief work. Medical workers and troops have been sent in to reinforce
search and rescue operations.