As international rescue experts searched for survivors, the number of confirmed dead rose above 2,000 and the number of injured approached 7,000.

Most of the estimated 2,000 buried for more than two days were in all probability dead, rescue workers said. ``The chances of recovering survivors is really small,'' said Kan Hsin-Chin, fire chief at the town of Chungliao in central Taiwan, where four out of five houses were destroyed in Tuesday's quake.

The government also began cracking down on building contractors as probe began into why buildings erected during a construction boom over the past decade were worst effected by Taiwan's killer earthquake.

More than 1,000 architects and technicians have assembled to under take an inquiry on whether the thousands of buildings collapses were caused by design faults orpoor workmanship. One contractor who built four properties in Yunlin county which were destroyed had been arrested, vice justice minister Tseng Yung-Fu said.

Meanwhile, a doctor working at refugee camp near Chungliao said that without food, water, medicine or oxygen, it would be ``a miracle'' if those trapped survived a third day, adding ``people simply cannot survive in this environment.''

In Chungliao, bulldozers were moving in to demolish some residential blocks where authorities had determined there were no signs of life. There and for miles around, homeless and injured survivors were spending their third day in makeshift camps in fields away from buildings, dependent on food donations.

The danger of disease, said the doctor, was great. In Chungliao, 700 refugees were living in a camp alongside a stack of dozens of rotting bodies. ``The bodies are exposed and diseased,'' he said. Referring to the morgues which filled within hours of the quake and the continuing power cut, he said: ``We only havethis tent to separate them from the people.''