MIANYANG (China), May 13: Rescue workers sifted through tangled debris of toppled schools and homes on Tuesday for thousands of victims buried or missing after China’s worst earthquake in three decades, as the death toll soared to more than 12,000 people in the hardest-hit province alone.

As night fell the day after the powerful 7.9 magnitude quake tore through urban areas and mountain villages across central China, rescue workers reached the epicentre in Wenchuan county, north of the Sichuan provincial capital, Chengdu.

Some 50,000 police and soldiers were mobilised for rescue efforts. The death toll was expected to jump sharply as rescuers worked their way through hard-hit towns at the epicentre.

Initial reports from soldiers who had to hike in over blocked roads showed there may be only 2,300 survivors from a population of 9,000 in Yinxiu, one of the affected towns, state TV quoted local emergency official He Biao as saying.

People in the city of Mianyang, about 100 kilometres east of the epicentre, spent a second night sleeping outside in the rain, some under striped plastic sheeting strung between trees. The government ordered people not to return to their homes, citing safety concerns, and posted security guards outside apartment complexes to keep people out.

Few lights were on in the city of 700,000, and people ate and chatted by candlelight.

“My heart was so uneasy last night, I couldn’t sleep,” said Wen Dajian, wrapped in a floral quilt lying on the rickshaw he uses to make a living hauling goods. “I’m still so scared tonight. There’s no place for me to go.”

Rescue teams brought people evacuated from the hard-hit town of Beichuan to Mianyang’s sports stadium for food and shelter. Outside the railway station, police shouted through megaphones telling people where they could get free rice porridge.

Buses carrying survivors headed away from Beichuan, which was flattened by the quake. Footage on CCTV showed few buildings standing amid piles of rubble in a narrow valley. The six-story Beichuan Hotel sat listing to one side, half its first story collapsed. Medical teams tried to treat the injured in dirt courtyards littered with broken furniture and rubble.

In a massive government relief operation, some 20,000 soldiers and police arrived in the disaster area with 30,000 more on the way by plane, train, truck and on foot, the Defense Ministry told the official Xinhua News Agency. Rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings.

“Survivors can hold on for some time. Now it’s not time to give up,” Wang Zhenyao, disaster relief division director at the Ministry of Civil Affairs, told reporters in Beijing.

Xinhua said more than 12,000 had died in Sichuan province alone, but difficulties in accessing some areas meant the total number of casualties remained uncertain. In counties around one city near the epicentre, 18,645 people remained buried, the agency said.

More than two dozen British and American tourists who were thought to be panda-watching in the area also remained missing.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving quake-hit Dujiangyan city with a soiled, light-blue blanket draped over his shoulders.

“My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed,” he said. “I don’t know where I’ll live.”—AP