More troops rush for China quake rescue

CHENGDU, China - China poured more troops into the earthquake-ravaged province of Sichuan on Wednesday to quicken a search for survivors as time ran out for thousands of people still buried under rubble and mud.
Some 30,000 troops will join 20,000 already digging through rubble in the southwest province of Sichuan, where Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake crumpled homes, schools and hospitals, the Xinhua news agency reported, citing a Ministry of Defence spokesman.
Across the region there were clusters of weary survivors and rescuers pulling at broken chunks of buildings and peering into crevices in hopes of finding someone still alive.
"There's still people inside, there's still people inside!" shouted a man surnamed Zhang, gesturing at the rubble of a building in Dujiangyan. "There must be a dozen dead people in there," he said.
The national death toll from the quake has climbed past 13,000 and is likely to rise steeply after media said 19,000 people were buried in rubble in just one area of Sichuan.
"It's looking bad. There's food and water coming in, but there's not much hope of many more people coming out alive. You just imagine how we feel," said Li Aomin, a businessman in Dujiangyan.
A near overwrought Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was shown on state television scrambling over the remains of a collapsed school and using a bullhorn to urge on rescuers.
"At present the number one thing is still saving people," Wen also told local officials, according to Xinhua. "All collapsed buildings must be fully checked. If there is a glimmer of hope, then put everything into rescuing."
But the depth of destruction in many towns across the mountainous area suggests searchers will find many more bodies than survivors among the toppled buildings, which have become grim vigil sites for desperate families.
Rain has frustrated rescuers' efforts to get to some areas and more rain is forecast for coming days.
In Beichuan County, at least 1,000 students and teachers were buried under a seven-storey school building, and rows of apartment blocks in the town collapsed. Locals told Xinhua that up to 8,000 residents may have died.
"People escaped from the buildings but were only devoured by the landslides," one survivor, Lei Xiaoying, told Xinhua. "There was no way to escape."
That scene has been repeated in many places where troops are only now entering after struggling to traverse severed roads.
Widespread devastation
State media reported devastation in villages near the epicentre in Wenchuan, a remote county cut off by landslides about 100 km (60 miles) northwest of the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu.
About 60,000 people were unaccounted for across Wenchuan, authorities said.
Amid the overwhelming grief, there were also moments of relief when survivors were found. In Mianzhu, where rescuers said the death toll had risen to 3,000, about 500 people were pulled out alive from crushed buildings.
An earlier report said 10,000 people there were buried under rubble.
A further 18,645 people were buried under debris in Mianyang, a city that also covers much farmland, Xinhua said.
One steam turbine factory near Mianyang was almost wiped out by the quake, and 500 workers and their family members were missing, local media reported.
The quake was the worst to hit China since the 1976 Tangshan quake in northeastern China, when up to 300,000 died.
Offers of aid have poured in from all over the world, three months before the Beijing Olympics. The disaster has for now sidelined upbeat propaganda about the games as well as international tensions over recent unrest in Tibet.
Overnight, Chinese President Hu Jintao spoke about the earthquake, as well as Tibet and other subjects, with U.S. President George W. Bush.
Hu told Bush that Chinese people "deeply grieved" the massive loss of life in the earthquake, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on its Web site (www.fmprc.gov.cn).
Analysts said they did not expect serious economic effects from the disaster, but supply shortages could fuel inflation -- already at a near 12-year high.
The People's Bank of China said it was providing 5.5 billion yuan ($786.7 million) to local banks in Sichuan and Gansu provinces to help disaster relief and reconstruction there.
Central authorities have ordered stricken areas to ensure food supplies and price stability. But some Chinese news reports described price hikes and shortages in quake-hit areas.
Radio broadcasts in Chengdu, province capital of Sichuan, appealed for people to be patient in waiting for aid.