Deadly Aftershock Jolts Sichuan As Mourning Begins

China will begin three days of mourning with a nationwide silence at 2.28pm this afternoon, precisely one week after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck.

Air raid sirens and horns of vehicles, trains and ships will be sounded in grief at the end of a three-minute silence and national flags will fly at half-mast across the country and at Chinese embassies worldwide.

Beijing Olympic organisers said in a statement that the torch relay - due to reach Sichuan next month - would also be suspended for three days "to express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake".

The State Council announcement came as it emerged that three more people died and 1,000 were injured when a powerful aftershock hit Jiangyou city, Sichuan province, in the early hours of yesterday.

Xinhua, the state news agency, reported that the aftershock destroyed houses and damaged 230 miles of roads and six bridges.

The confirmed death toll from the quake rose to 32,476 and the council - China's cabinet - said that 220,109 were injured. Officials have said the final death toll is expected to surpass 50,000.

Rescue attempts were given impetus by the freeing of a handful of survivors.

Xinhua reported that rescuers amputated the legs of a woman to free her after six days trapped under a flattened power plant in Yingxiu town, at the quake's epicentre, while a man survived with head injuries after being pulled from a collapsed office building in Maoxian county to the northeast. A "slightly bruised" man was also saved from a collapsed hospital after 139 hours.

But teams acknowledged that few survivors were likely to be found at this stage and attention is turning to dealing with the dead. Witnesses have reported mass graves in several of the worst-hit spots, while staff at a crematorium said that all the facilities in the district had been at full stretch.

The sheer number of deaths, and the need to dispose of bodies quickly given Sichuan's hot climate, has led to many being cremated or buried before any surviving relatives can identify them. But experts are taking DNA samples and photographs, offering the bereaved some prospect of finding out what happened to their loved ones.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said it was critical that clean water and hygiene facilities were soon restored, as millions of people continued to sleep under canvas or tarpaulins across the region.

Continuing tremors have made many reluctant to return home even if their houses appear undamaged.

"Ensuring supply of food and safe drinking water and trying to restore good sanitation are critical because these are basic transmission routes for communicable diseases," said Hans Troedsson, WHO's representative in China.

WHO added that while dead bodies were distressing for survivors, they did not pose a major health risk.

"There is no public health threat from dead bodies and this misapprehension causes unnecessary diversion of staff and resources at a critical time," said Dr Arturo Pesigan, technical officer for emergency and humanitarian action in the region.

Chinese health officials have said there have not been any disease outbreaks so far and in some quake-hit areas officials and troops have set up better shelters with showers and drinking water.

In a rare public briefing in Beijing yesterday, senior officials from the People's Liberation Army (PLA) told reporters that they had responded to the disaster immediately - sending the first team to the zone within 14 minutes of the shock.

The specialist relief team included members who worked in the earthquake that hit northern Pakistan in 2005, said Major General Ma Jian of the PLA's high command.

"We feel our troops should be able to quickly respond to any danger, including carrying out diversified military operations. So, in peaceful times our troops are prepared to respond to natural disasters," he added.

He also told reporters that nuclear facilities in the quake zone were safe.

The PLA is the world's largest standing army with well over 2 million members. Up to 150,000 soldiers and paramilitary police have taken part in the relief and rescue effort.

China has also welcomed search and rescue teams from Japan, Russia, South Korea and Singapore, after initial resistance.

But yesterday a British disaster rescue charity said it had been prevented from sending a specialist team to the earthquake zone.

Julie Ryan, spokeswoman for International Rescue Corps, said 10 volunteers had flown to Hong Kong the day after the shock, in the hope that they could help.

She added that they left on Saturday after the Chinese government said it did not have the resources to manage their work.