By AUDRA ANG, AP
May 19, 2008
BEICHUAN, China - China declared three days of national mourning for earthquake victims and ordered a suspension of the Olympic torch relay, as hopes dimmed yesterday in the search for survivors.
The State Council said the mourning period would start today and include three minutes of silence observed nationwide at 2:28 p.m., the time the quake struck.
Beijing Olympic organizers said in a statement that the torch relay would be suspended "to express our deep mourning for the victims of the earthquake."
In the disaster zone in Sichuan province, efforts appeared to shift yesterday from searching for buried survivors to clearing corpses from shattered buildings as the government said the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476.
Another 220,109 people suffered injuries, according to a statement from the State Council, China's Cabinet. The government has said it expects the final death toll will surpass 50,000.
Meanwhile, medics had to amputate the legs of a woman in order to rescue her after six days trapped under a flattened power plant in Yingxiu town, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
And a "slightly bruised" man was saved from a collapsed hospital after being trapped for 139 hours.
