05/14/2008
Military helicopters have dropped food and medicine to quake survivors who remained cut off in remote villages, while a jump in deaths pushed the toll close to 20,000.
Xinhua News Agency quoted government officials as saying rescuers who went Wednesday to the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county -the epicenter of the 7.9 magnitude quake- found that of a population of about 10,000, only 2,300 survived, and 1,000 of them were badly hurt.
The 7,700 dead in Yingxiu were believed to be in addition to the previously reported death toll of more than 12,000.
Xinhua said the death toll for Mianyang city was confirmed at 5,430, up from 3,629, as of about noon Wednesday, with more than 18,000 people there still thought to be buried under crushed buildings.
Submit this story to:
Digg
Del.icio.us
Technorati
