西方媒体粗陋的嘴脸又出现在中国灾难上
China: Earthquake death toll close to 20,000
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Soldiers carry a wounded person out from a collapsed building at the earthquake-hit Beichuan County, China, which is about 100 miles from Wenchuan County, the earthquake's epicenter.
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QUAKE STRIKES SICHUAN CITY
Yahoo! Buzz Digg Newsvine Reddit FacebookWhat's this?AN XIAN, China (AP) — Military helicopters dropped food and medicine to Chinese earthquake survivors who remained cut off Wednesday in remote mountain villages, while a jump in deaths pushed the toll close to 20,000.
The scale of devastation became clearer as more rescuers walked into the hardest-hit areas of central Sichuan province, finding towns where 80% of the population fell victim to Monday's magnitude 7.9 quake.
The official Xinhua News Agency quoted government officials as saying rescuers who hiked Wednesday into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county — the quake's epicenter — found it "much worse than expected." Of the town's population of about 10,000, only 2,300 survived, and 1,000 of them were badly hurt.
The survivors there "desperately needed medical help, food and water," Xinhua said.
The 7,700 dead in Yingxiu were believed to be in addition to the previously reported death toll of more than 12,000.
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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.
Relief efforts were aided in their third day by the clearing of storms that had prevented flights over some of the worst-hit towns. Military helicopters seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said two of them airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
Survivors mourned the dead. East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, the smell of incense hung over a crowd of sobbing relatives who walked among some 60 bodies wrapped in plastic, some covered with tributes of branches or flowers.
Nearby, rescuers in blue uniforms carried more bodies out of a makeshift morgue at the Dongqi sports arena. The dead appeared to have come from heavily damaged apartments and a school behind the arena, where people stood in stunned shock.
Residents complained that delays in aid had caused more deaths in the immediate aftermath of the quake.
Zhang Chuanlin, a 27-year-old factory worker, said his 52-year-old mother was trapped while watching television with her friend. No rescue workers were around so he started to dig by himself.
"No one was helping me and then two strangers came and dug through the rubble. They found her an hour later," he said. "When they pulled her out I couldn't look, I just couldn't look when they pulled her out."
Zhang said he had sent a text message to his mother on Sunday, Mother's Day, to say he loved her. He and his girlfriend had bought her a pair of slippers but she had not had a chance to wear them.
A man who gave only his surname Li said he had suffered a double tragedy. His wife was killed while watching TV with Zhang's mother and his daughter died when her school collapsed.
The child did not die right away and could be heard saying, "Please help me daddy, please rescue me," right after the earthquake, he said, but there were no authorities to save her.
In Dujiangyan, a mother pleaded with police for information about her husband who was working in Wenchuan, blocking one of the few roads leading to the epicenter.
"I've begged and begged them to help me look for my husband," Li Zhenhua said, showing her husbands ID card to a crowd of onlookers. "I can't go by myself because I've got a little baby and elderly parents here, so I can't leave."
"The government is doing nothing for us. The government won't help us," she said, over and over.
Disaster victims huddled by the road in An Xian, under a makeshift wood-and-plastic shelter to protect them from the rain in front of their destroyed homes. Government buses have brought some survivors from devastated areas in Beichuan, but 38-year-old farmer Li Zizhong said he had not heard from his relatives there yet.
"Who knows what happened to them," Li said. "All we need is a little something to eat. I'm just happy to be alive."
Li and a friend had built a wood and plastic shelter with a straw floor where about 30 family members spent the night. Their destroyed homes were in the background.
Premier Wen Jiabao 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."
"The party and the government are concerned about you. Your pain is our pain," Wen told survivors in Red Cross tents, his arms wrapped around two little girls and a somber-faced woman, in footage aired on CCTV.
Some signs of normalcy returned. In Chengdu, some schools resumed classes, Xinhua reported.
The government's high-gear response aimed to reassure Chinese while showing the world it was capable of handling the disaster and was ready for the Aug. 8-24 Olympics in Beijing.
Wednesday's leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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