Nearly 15,000 people died in the devastating earthquake that hit China's Sichuan province, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.
Thousands more are still trapped in the rubble two days after the 7.9 quake struck, causing landslides and razing homes, schools and whole villages.
China's Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was flying to the epicentre to see relief work, having met survivors elsewhere.
Troops have been mobilised and aid has been dropped to cut-off areas.
Sichuan's vice governor Li Chengyun said incomplete figures suggested 14,463 people were dead, another 14,051 were missing, 25,788 were buried in the debris and 64,746 had been Severe quake hits southwest China ...
Torch begins mainland China tour ... injured, Xinhua reports.
Officials reached the town of Yingxiu, in Wenchuan County, to find the devastation was worse than expected - out of the town's population of 10,000, only 2,300 have been found alive.
The head of a police unit sent into the disaster zone said the losses had been severe.
"Some towns basically have no houses left," Wang Yi, told Sichuan Online news site. "They have all been razed to the ground."
See a map of the earthquake area
Slow progress
Poor weather has hampered aid efforts, and rescuers have been forced to trek to areas cut off by the quake damage and search through the rubble with their bare hands.
Officials for the Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Railways told reporters that road conditions were impeding relief work. "We may have 10 machines but given the road condition only one excavator can used at one time, and we can only push forward one metre by one metre," one said.
The earthquake on Monday was the worst to strike China since more than 240,000 people were killed in Tangshan in 1976.
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(BBC)
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