China Mourns As Death Toll Rises

China today began three days of mourning with a nationwide silence at 2.28pm (7.28am BST), precisely one week after the 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck.

It coincided with an announcement that the official death toll had risen to 34,000 and news that 200 rescue workers had been buried by a number of mudslides over the past three days in Sichuan province.

Air raid sirens and horns of vehicles, trains and ships marked the end of the three-minute silence and national flags flew at half-mast across the country and at Chinese embassies worldwide.

All internet entertainment and game sites have been taken off line and users redirected to sites dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims, the Chinese news website sina.com reported.

Beijing Olympic organizers said the torch relay - due to reach Sichuan next month – would be suspended for three days "to express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake".

The confirmed death toll from the quake rose to 34,073 and the council - China's cabinet - said 220,109 people were injured. Officials said the final death toll was expected to top 50,000.

Rescue work has been hampered by a series of aftershocks and landslides. The state news agency, Xinhua, quoting a Sichuan provincial official, said workers had been buried by mudslides while repairing damaged roads. The official gave no death toll but said three of incidents took place in Yingxiu, close to the epicenter.

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

A woman, who had been trapped for six days under rubble in Beichuan county, was rescued this morning. Xinhua reported that rescuers amputated her legs to free her from beneath a flattened power plant in Yingxiu town, at the quake's epicentre.

A man survived with head injuries after being pulled from a collapsed office building in Maoxian county and a "slightly bruised" man was saved from a collapsed hospital.

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

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

The World Health Organization (WHO) said it was essential 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 people reluctant to return home even if their houses appeared 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.

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

Chinese health officials said there had 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 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 more than 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.