00:01:41
ITN
China: tens of thousands still missing
China: tens of thousands still missing
Tens of thousands of people are still unaccounted for as the rescue effort continues in the aftermath of the Chinese quake.Harsh weather overnight hampered the search for survivors as fresh horrors continue to unfold and the scale of the rescue and clean-up operation becomes clearer.Rescuers are trying to push farther into remote villages in searches certain to dramatically raise the official death toll of 12,000.Footage from the town Mianzhu, 60 miles from the earthquake's epicentre, showed the scale of of the damage and devastation.At least 4,800 people are believed to buried under rubble in the town.Tens of thousands of survivors left homeless by the disaster have spent a second night outdoors.Mianzhu, along with nearby Aoping and the village of Hong Yan, are in Sichuan province which was hit hardest by Monday's 7.9 magnitude earthquake.Meanwhile, Chinese state media reported on Wednesday that 7,700 were believed killed out of the 10,000 people in the Sichuan town of Yingxiu but that figure was not immediately added to the official toll.Rescuers who hiked across landslide-blocked roads into Yingxiu are reported to have found the Wenchuan county town "much worse than expected". The report said only 2,300 people were believed to have survived.The death toll as of late Tuesday was at least 12,012 in Sichuan and another 323 in five other provinces and the metropolis of Chongqing.But at least 18,000 are believed trapped in rubble, most in Beichuan - a hard-hit area on the edge of the quake's epicentre.
ITN | May 14, 2008
