BEICHUAN, China - China will spend three days marking the moment when tens of thousands died in a devastating earthquake, while hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled yesterday and preventing hunger and disease became more pressing.
The government announced an official mourning period starting today and asked China's 1.3 billion people to observe three minutes of silence starting at 2:28 p.m. - exactly one week after the quake killed an estimated 50,000.
The Olympic torch relay - a potent symbol of national pride in the countdown to August's much anticipated Beijing games - also will be suspended during the mourning period, the organizing committee said.
As the second week of China's worst disaster in a generation approached, the search for anyone left alive in the rubble turned glum despite remarkable survival tales among thousands who were buried.
"It will soon be too late" to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team working in Beichuan, a town reduced to rubble.
His team pulled 10 bodies out of Beichuan's high school yesterday.
The steady run of rescue news flashed by the official Xinhua News Agency has slowed. Just three rescues were reported yesterday, including a woman in Yingxiu town who was reached by soldiers who dug a 15-foot tunnel through the wreckage of a flattened power station and had to amputate both her legs to set free, after 150 hours.
"She was in a delirious state" and told rescuers to leave her alone, thinking she was already in a hospital, Xinhua quoted rescuer Ma Gang as saying. "We fed her milk and water, and her family was there to reassure her."
Dozens of aftershocks have rumbled through the region, extending the damage. A magnitude-6 temblor yesterday killed three people, injured more than 1,000, and caused further damage to houses and roads, Xinhua reported.
With more bodies discovered, the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476, the State Council, China's Cabinet, reported. The injured numbered more than 220,000.
Many bodies lay by roadsides in body bags or wrapped in plastic sheeting, as authorities struggled to deal with the sheer number of corpses by digging burial pits and working crematoriums overtime....
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How ghastly!!!
