Over 40,000 dead, missing or buried in China quake

0 Comments | AFP, May, 2008

DUJIANGYAN, China (AFP) — More than 40,000 people were dead, missing or buried under rubble in China's southwest, officials said Wednesday, as the full horror of its devastating earthquake began to emerge.

Rescue teams who punched into the quake's stricken epicentre reported whole towns all but wiped off the map, spurring frantic efforts to bring emergency relief to the survivors.

Planes and helicopters air-dropped supplies, 100 troops parachuted into a county that had been cut off, and rescuers in cities and towns across Sichuan province fought to pull the living and the dead from the debris.

But the overwhelming message that came back from this southwestern province was that only now is a picture slowly beginning to form of the epic scale of Monday's...