More Than 12,000 Dead in China Quake As Rescuers Struggle to Reach Injured

The death toll from the earthquake in China has risen above 12,000 in one province alone as rescuers today struggled to reach victims.

The official death toll across the whole of China had been put as 11,921. But the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that more than 12,000 people were killed in Sichuan alone. The death toll has been rising steadily throughout the day.

The disaster has left thousands more people trapped in the rubble of collapsed schools, factories, hospitals and homes.

Road, rail, air and phone links to the epicenter of the 7.9-magnitude quake were cut, hampering both relief efforts and the flow of information about the scale of the catastrophe.

Rain was impeding rescue efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported. Some Chinese troops were marching up to 100 miles through the night to reach affected areas.

It is feared that the quake was China's deadliest since 1976, when 240,000 people were killed in the city of Tangshan, near Beijing. At least 4,800 people remained buried in Mianzhu, 60 miles from the epicenter of the quake.

Chinese rescue workers reported that 3,629 people had been confirmed dead in Mianyang city, with 18,645 still buried under debris.

The Chinese ministry of health issued an appeal for blood donations to help the victims. "There is a large demand for blood in quake-hit areas, and we hope the public actively donate blood," said Mao Quan, a ministry spokesman.

Xinhua said up to 5,000 people were killed and 80% of buildings had collapsed in Beichuan, in a region of small cities and towns amid steep hills north of Sichuan's provincial capital, Chengdu. The government had sent more than 16,000 troops to the area, and tens of thousands more were on the way.

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county. The building, more than six storys high, was reduced to a pile of rubble. The deaths were separate from those at another collapsed school, in Dujiangyan, where 900 students are feared dead.

Fifteen British tourists in the area at the time were reported to be "out of reach" by state media.

Yesterday's quake and aftershocks caused panic and mass evacuations in cities across the country, including Beijing, 930 miles away, Shanghai and Wuhan. They were felt as far away as Vietnam and Thailand, 1,300 miles to the south.

In Shanghai, China's financial center, skyscrapers swayed as the tremor hit, sending office workers rushing into the streets. "I've lived in Taipei and California and I've been through quakes before. This is the most I've ever felt," James McGregor, a business consultant, said. "The floor was moving beneath me."

The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, flew to the scene, while thousands of troops and paramilitary police headed there after the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, ordered an "all out" rescue effort. State TV showed a clearly emotional Wen vowing not to waste a moment. At one point he was shown shouting into a hole: "Everyone hang in there. We're rescuing you."

Melissa Block, a reporter for America's National Public Radio, was in Chengdu when the quake struck. "I was in a building, the building started to shake, there was a huge rumble and everybody ran," she said.

"There are still many, many people out in the streets. They don't want to go back into the buildings because there are rumors of aftershocks and possible secondary quakes."

Details were only beginning to trickle out from the mountainous Wenchuan county, which has a population of 100,000. Phone lines to the area were brought down, and a website for the region's Aba prefecture said the quake had hit roads and brought down communications in 11 counties.

A spokesman for the organizing committee for the Beijing Olympics said buildings for the games had been designed to withstand earthquakes. "The Olympic venues were not affected by the earthquake," Sun Weide said. "We considered earthquakes when building those venues."

Beijing organizers said the Olympic torch relay would continue unaltered through the quake-affected area next month.

The US president, George Bush, sent condolences to the families of victims. "The United States stands ready to help in any way possible," he said.

China's government said it would welcome outside aid. Qin Gang, a foreign ministry spokesman, said relief authorities were "ready to make contact with relevant countries and organizations".

Russia was sending a plane with rescuers and aid, the country's Interfax news agency reported.

China's Ministry of Finance said it had allocated 860m yuan (US$123m; £60m) in aid for quake-hit areas.

Greg Houseman, a professor at the University of Leeds who has researched seismic activity in China, said: "You can get very large earthquakes occurring where buildings are well constructed, and you might get 50 or 100 people dying. If the buildings are poorly constructed, you can get 10,000 or 20,000 deaths."