Troops reach epicenter

The government’s response shows the world it is ready for the Aug. 8-24 Olympics.

MIANYANG, China (AP) — Soldiers hiking over landslide-blocked roads reached the epicenter of China’s devastating earthquake Tuesday, pulling bodies and a few survivors from collapsed buildings. The death toll of more than 12,000 was certain to rise as the buried were found.

Rescuers worked through a steady rain searching wrecked towns across hilly stretches of Sichuan province that were stricken by Monday’s magnitude-7.9 quake, China’s deadliest in three decades. Tens of thousands spent a second night outdoors, some sleeping under plastic sheeting, others bused to a stadium in the city of Mianyang, on the edge of the disaster area.

The industrial city of 700,000 people — home to the headquarters of China’s nuclear weapons design industry — was turned into a thronging refugee camp, with residents sleeping outdoors.

As night fell, a first wave of 200 soldiers entered the town of Wenchuan, near the epicenter, trudging across ruptured roads and mudslides, state television said. Initial reports from troops said one nearby town could account for only 2,300 survivors out of 9,000 people, China Central Television said.

At least 12,012 deaths occurred in Sichuan alone while another 323 died in five other provinces and the metropolis of Chongqing, state media reported. That toll seemed likely to jump sharply as rescue teams reached hard-hit towns.

The devastation and ramped-up rescue across large, heavily populated region of farms and factory towns strained local governments. Food dwindled on the shelves of the few stores that remained open. Gasoline was scarce, with long lines outside some stations and pumps marked “empty.”

Buses carried survivors away from Beichuan, which was flattened — a few buildings standing amid piles of rubble in a narrow valley, according to CCTV video.

The government’s high-gear response aimed to reassure Chinese while showing the world it was capable of handling the disaster and was ready for the Aug. 8-24 Olympics in Beijing. Although the government said it welcomed outside aid, officials said that the assistance would be confined to money and supplies, not to foreign personnel.

As Prime Minister Wen Jiabao crisscrossed the disaster area to oversee relief efforts, the official Xinhua news agency cited the Defense Ministry as saying that 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.

Weeping parents held a vigil in a steady outside a collapsed school in the town of Juyuan, where more than 900 high school students were initially trapped. Only one survivor has been found: a girl pulled free by rescue team.

Bowing to public calls, Beijing Olympics organizers scaled down the boisterous torch relay, saying today’s leg in the southeastern city of Ruijin would begin with a minute of silence and more somber ceremonies. People along the route for the torch, which next month is scheduled to arrive in quake-hit areas, would be asked for donations.