China says quake death toll has risen to almost 29,000

The death toll from the deadliest earthquake to hit China in three decades has risen to almost 29,000, cabinet spokesman Guo Weimin told a news conference on Saturday.

About 4.8 million people have lost their homes and the days are numbered in which survivors can be found. "Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, has passed, saving lives remains the top priority of our work," Hu told distraught survivors just over a week after a jubilant China celebrated the Olympic torch reaching the summit of Mount Everest.

In earthquakes elsewhere in the world, survivors have been found a week or more after the disaster. In Baguio in the Philippines in 1990, a cook was found alive in the rubble of a shattered hotel after two weeks.

He had drunk his own urine and drops of rainwater to stay alive. A man and a woman trapped for 11 days in an elevator shaft in the hotel were also rescued.

Among other survivors on Saturday, Xinhua said 33 people were dug out of the rubble in Beichuan, one of the worst hit areas. One young man was rescued after being buried for 104 hours and troops evacuated 18 scientists trapped in a forest in Mianzhu.

Premier Wen Jiabao said the 7.9 magnitude quake was "the biggest and most destructive" since before the Communist revolution of 1949 and the quick response had helped reduce casualties.

That compares even with the 1976 tremor in the northeastern city of Tangshan which killed up to 300,000 people.

Hygiene

And as the weather gets warmer, survivors were increasingly worried about hygiene and asking questions about their longer-term future. "What we don't need now is more instant noodles," said truck driver Wang Jianhong in the city of Dujiangyan. "We want to know now what will happen with our lives."

In Sichuan and neighbouring Chongqing, at least 17 reservoirs have been damaged, with some dams cracked or leaking water. Several are on the Min River, which tumbles through the worst-hit areas between the Tibetan plateau and the Sichuan plain.

The Lianhehua dam, built in the late 1950s northwest of Dujiangyan, showed cracks big enough to put a fist in. "When the dam is in this shape, we cannot feel relaxed," said farmer Feng Binggui who has moved from his village below the dam into the hills.

China is also on precautionary alert against possible radiation leaks, according to a government website.

China's chief nuclear weapons research lab is in Mianyang, along with several secret atomic sites, but there are no nuclear power stations.

China has sent 130,000 troops to the disaster area, but roads buckled by the quake and blocked by landslides have made it hard for supplies and rescuers to reach the worst-hit areas.

Offers of help have flooded in and foreign rescue teams from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore have arrived.