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Chinese rescuers race against time as quake toll soars
Chinese rescuers race against time as quake toll soars
Kean Wong: And the death toll from China's deadliest earthquake in decades climbs to nearly 15,000, as a desperate rescue operation continues. Lets go to Sichuan Province as the tragedy unfolds: Tens of thousands of troops, firefighters and civilians race to save more than 25,000 people buried across a wide swathe of southwest Sichuan province. Schools, factories and hospitals collapsed during Monday's earthquake. The official death toll climbed to almost 15,000 as rescuers pulled at tangled chunks of buildings for signs of life. In Dujiangyan, a city midway between Chengdu and the epicentre, rescue workers fought to save children trapped in the rubble of a school demolished by the earthquake. Chen Jun, a local resident in Dujiangyan, clung to the hope of seeing his little boy again, following the collapse of his home. [Chen Jun, Dujiangyan Resident]: "We have no food or shelter here. I only hope that someone will come and help me dig out the body (of my child). I still hang on to some hope that he's alive. He was so young, just two years old." In the town of Juyuan, grieving parents identified children killed by a collapsed school, as troops struggled to remove rubble and keep order. Hundreds of students and staff are still buried under the rubble. These pictures from Beichuan, which rescuers have struggled to reach, show near total devastation. Survivors lay alongside the dead in the open air, surrounded by rubble. In a village some 20 kilometres from the epicentre of Monday's earthquake, residents struggled to cope as blocked roads and rainy weather mean aid has failed to reach them. Over 90 percent of the houses in the village were destroyed. With water and electricity cut off since Monday afternoon, residents were growing more and more desperate. The death toll is set to climb further as many of the dead are ignored while rescuers search for those still alive.
YouTube | May 19, 2008
