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Towns in China quake zone razed to ground

Death toll rises to 15,000, tens of thousands more feared buried or missing

AFP, Beijing
Some towns near the epicentre of China's huge earthquake have been 'razed to the ground’ with no houses left standing, a People's Armed Police official was quoted by state media saying yesterday.
"The losses have been severe. Some towns basically have no houses left. They have all been razed to the ground," Wang Yi, head of an armed police unit sent into the disaster zone, was quoted as saying by Sichuan Online news site.
Wang said "some" of the eight towns in Wenchuan county at the epicentre of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake had suffered the heavy damage.
He did not specify exactly how many towns had been flattened by
the quake that struck on Monday but was quoted as saying they "include" the towns Yingxiu, Xuankou, andWolong.
AP from Hanwang reports: Military helicopters dropped food and medicine to Chinese earthquake survivors who remained cut off yesterday in remote mountain villages behind roads clogged by landslides. The official death toll rose to nearly 15,000, and tens of thousands more were feared buried or missing.
As help began to arrive in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive. But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid
stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Maryland.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked yesterday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county the epicenter of Monday's magnitude 7.9 quake found it "much worse than expected."
The official death toll rose to 14,866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7,700 reported dead in Yingxiu. In Sichuan province alone, another 25,788 people were buried and 14,051 missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.
The toll was expected to rise further once rescuers reach other towns in Wenchuan that remain cut off from the Sichuan provincial capital of Chengdu more than two days after the quake. Roads leading to Wenchuan from all directions were still being cleared of debris. Feng Zhenglin, deputy minister of railway and transportation, said in Beijing.
The death toll for Mianyang city was also confirmed at 5,430, up from 3,629, on Wednesday, Xinhua said, with more than 18.000 people there still thought to be buried under crushed buildings.
At a middle school Sichuan province's Qingchuan county where students were taking a noon nap when the quake demolished a three-story building. 178 children were confirmed dead in the rubble and another 23 remained missing, Xinhua said.
Storms that had prevented flights to some of the worst hit areas finally cleared on Wednesday. Military helicopters were seen flying north over Dujiangyan. and Xinhua said two of them airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
Trains were on their way to Sichuan carrying quilts, drinking water, tents and military personnel. Ministry of Railways spokesman Wong Yongping said. All railways in the province were working except for a line where a 40-car freight train was trapped by a landslide in a tunnel and
burned, he said.
Rescuers raced to save people trapped under flattened buildings.
A 34-year-old woman who was eight months pregnant was rescued after spending 50 hours under debris in Dujiangyan.
In the Beichuan region, a 3-year-old girl who was trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents was pulled to safety. Xinhua said.
Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Hiesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Premier Wen Jiabao looked over her wounds, part of his Iiighly publicized tour of the disaster area aimed at reassuring the public about the government's response and to show the world that the country is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday's kg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.
Wen said some 100.000 troops and police had been dispatched to the disaster zone. He also visited a school Wednesday in Beichuan where two classroom buildings collapsed in the earthquake, including a school with 2.000 students that state TV said sustained "heavy casualties."