Chinese rescue workers have reported that 3,629 people had been confirmed dead and 18,645 were still buried under debris in Mianyang city, which neighbours the epicenter of Monday’s massive earthquake.

The official death toll so far from the 7.6 magnitude quake is over 12,000. It is not known if the Minyang figures are included in that.

Bodies covered with sheets lined streets as rescue workers dug through schools and homes turned into rubble by China’s worst earthquake in three decades in a desperate attempt to rescue victims trapped under concrete slabs.

But hope that many survivors would be found was fleeting. “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.

A day after the powerful quake struck on Monday afternoon, state media said rescue workers had reached the epicenter in Wenchuan county—where the number of casualties was still unknown.

Rain was impeding efforts and a group of paratroopers called off a rescue mission to the epicenter due to heavy storms, Xinhua reported.

At least 4,800 people also remained buried in Mianzhu, 100 km from the epicenter, Xinhua said, citing local authorities. Earthquake rescue experts in orange jumpsuits extricated bloody survivors on stretchers from demolished buildings, and some 34,000 troops swarmed into the region to help.

Aftershocks rattled the region for a second day, sending people running into the streets in Chengdu. The US Geological Survey measured the shocks between magnitude 4 and 6, some of the strongest since Monday’s quake.

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