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.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with a soiled light blue blanket draped over his shoulders. “My wife died in the quake. My house was destroyed,” he said. “I am going to Chengdu, but I don’t know where I’ll live.”

Zhou and other survivors were pulling luggage and clutching plastic bags of food amid a steady drizzle and the constant wall of ambulances.

Just east of the epicenter, 1,000 students and teachers were killed or missing at a collapsed high school in Beichuan county—a more than six-storey building reduced to a pile of rubble about two meters high, according to Xinhua. Xinhua said up to 5,000 people were killed and 80 percent of the buildings had collapsed in Beichuan.

The deaths were separate from another leveled school in Dujiangyan where 900 students were feared dead. As bodies of teenagers were carried out on doors used as makeshift stretchers, relatives lit incense and candles and also set off fireworks to ward away evil spirits.

Rescue teams were also trying to get to a woman who was eight months pregnant and trapped in a seven-story apartment building that collapsed.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity as soon as possible. His visit to the disaster scene was prominently featured on state TV, a gesture meant to reassure people that the ruling party was doing all it could.

Fifteen missing British tourists were believed in that area at the time of the quake and were “out of reach,” Xinhua reported. They were likely visiting the Wolong Nature Reserve. Two Chinese-Americans and a Thai tourist also were missing in Sichuan province, the agency said, citing tourism officials.