Reuters
BEICHUAN (China) - CHINA began three days of national mourning on Monday for more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago.
Public entertainment will be suspended, flags kept at half-mast and a three-minute silence observed to mark exactly a week since the quake, the government said.
The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing flew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn. The Olympic torch relay, currently on its domestic leg ahead of the Aug 8 opening in Beijing, will likewise be suspended for three days.
Around the country air raid sirens and car, train and ship horns will sound to 'wail in grief' at 2.28pm, the time the quake hit a week ago, the official Xinhua news agency said.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges and the futures exchanges in Shanghai, Zhengzhou and Dalian will also halt trading for three minutes from 2.28pm.
Presenters on state television wore black, and state-run newspapers ran black mastheads and no colour pictures.
In south-western Sichuan province's Beichuan, hard hit by the earthquake, relatives continued to travel back into the disaster zone to look for family members and see the damage for themselves.
'It's a good idea but maybe it's a bit early,' said Mr Zhou Wanli of the national state of mourning, sitting in the back of a truck heading into Beichuan.
'All we can care about for the time being is finding our relatives. We don't want to memorialise them if we don't even know if they're alive or dead,' he said.
Aftershock
On the eve of the official mourning period, a fresh tremor in south-western China killed three people, injured 1,000 and sent thousands fleeing their homes into the streets.
The tremor, one of the strongest aftershocks since the May 12 earthquake, hit Jiangyou city in Sichuan, Xinhua said.
It was 5.7 in magnitude and brought down a large number of houses, damaged 377km of roads and six bridges, rescue authorities said late on Sunday.
The official death toll stands at nearly 32,500 from the original quake of 7.9 magnitude that rattled Sichuan province.
Some 220,000 people are reported injured and a further 9,500 are thought to be still buried under the rubble in Sichuan. Most are feared dead.
Officials have tried to keep people from the area because of aftershocks and a build-up of water in blocked rivers.
Xinhua said the most dangerous mass of water was only about 3km upstream from Beichuan town where rescue workers saved a man on Sunday from under the remains of a hospital.
China says it expects the final death toll to exceed 50,000. About 4.8 million people have lost their homes.
Late on Sunday, a woman was also pulled out of the rubble in Yingxiu after a 56-hour rescue operation during which her legs were amputated, Xinhua reported. A man was earlier found alive in a collapsed office building in Maoxian county, it said.
Offers of help have flooded in and rescue teams with sniffer dogs and specialised equipment from Japan, Russia, Taiwan, South Korea, the United States and Singapore are assisting. Donations from home and abroad have topped 6 billion yuan (S$1.2 billion).
Statistics from past earthquakes show some victims have survived up to nearly a fortnight under rubble.
'I don't think they are going to find anymore people alive now, but they have to keep trying otherwise the ordinary people would never accept them giving up,' said Mr Zheng Xiaokang, as he prepared to go into Beichuan.
Children facing death by starvation: Aid agency
The Straits Times
The warning by Save The Children came as the international community stepped up efforts to get Myanmar to approve an all-out relief effort.
United Nations' chief Ban Ki-moon will leave New York tomorrow to visit Myanmar to discuss the delivery of international aid, a spokesman said yesterday.
Humanitarian aid agency Action Against Hunger has described the situation in the Bogale region where it was working as 'extremely alarming'.
'All day long, people are looking for food and for a way of cooking the food they find,' the group said.
'The survivors have mainly been feeding themselves with wild fruits and vegetables and mouldy rice, which they are trying to dry.'
Meanwhile, Senior Gen Than Shwe, 75, yesterday made his first visit to the cyclone-hit area on the outskirts of Yangon.
It is not known if he visited the Irrawaddy delta region which was hardest hit by the May 3 cyclone, which left 133,000 people dead and missing.
His visit was on the same day that the UN's top disaster official John Holmes arrived on a three-day visit to urge the regime to accept a massive relief effort.
Mr Holmes will meet senior government leaders, visit the delta and hold meetings with aid groups.
And in Thailand, Foreign Minister Noppadon Pattama said South-east Asian foreign ministers will consider sending Asean secretary-general Surin Pitsuwan to Myanmar.
The proposal will be discussed at a special meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Singapore today, he said.
The Myanmar junta has continued to insist it can handle most of the relief work by itself, and state media has been full of photos of smiling citizens receiving handouts from generals.
The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper yesterday carried more than two dozen stories praising its own relief efforts. But not everyone is convinced.
Britain's Asia Minister, Mr Mark Malloch-Brown, said a framework was being set up for a UN- and Asian-led system that could solve the impasse and make it easier to channel in aid.
'I think we're potentially at a turning point but, like all turning points in (Myanmar), the corner will have a few 'S' bends in it,' he said.
He added that the Asian/ UN-led process had already begun, with Asian nations considered friendly by Myanmar sending aid teams in, and an Asean assessment team on the ground. The team will report to the foreign ministers meeting in Singapore today.
Other countries would make their contributions through this channel, Mr Malloch-Brown added.
ASSOCIATED PRESS, REUTERS, AGENCE-FRANCE PRESSE
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