Gao Jianli lay under a quilt on the sports ground where she once played basketball, her mother and cousin at her side.

She looked as though she had simply fallen asleep, but her mother’s keening and the flickering candles by her white-stockinged feet told another story.

“She has no injuries, she wasn’t crushed,” her cousin said. “She must have been alive for a long time. In the end she suffocated.”

Gao Jiali was just 15. She died with hundreds of her schoolmates when the Juyuan Middle School crumbled under the force of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that struck China on Monday. Only two children were brought out alive.

Now her weeping mother was gently slipping clean trousers over her limp legs to make sure that Gao Jiali would make her last journey in new clothes. Then there was a final farewell hug before the men came to carry the child away in a procession with her classmates to the bus that would take them to the mortuary.

Behind the row of bodies, troops circled the ruins. A crane lifted slabs of concrete from the flattened five-storey school. One man had watched the destruction in stunned disbelief. “It took just ten seconds. One moment the school was there and then it was gone,” he said.

Frightened residents of Juyuan were sheltering from the driving rain under plastic sheeting. One family huddled together for warmth beside the ruins of their home. Chunks of concrete lay scattered around the metal chairs where they sat wrapped in quilts against the chill rain.

Without power, survivors were living on bread and packets of biscuits, unable to light a fire to boil water or cook because of the rain.

Their patience was beginning to snap. “This is the fault of the Government,” a bystander said angrily as he watched rescuers sift through the rubble of the school. “They were too slow. Look, it’s already 30 hours or more since the earthquake and our children are still lying in there.”

Another man, who had come to search for his nephew, was outraged by the shoddy building work that helped to topple the school. “Look at all the buildings around. They were the same height but why did the school fall down? It’s because the contractors want to make a profit from our children. They cut corners. They use poor-quality cement. And the Government turns a blind eye.

“These buildings just weren’t made for that powerful a quake. Some don’t even meet the basic specifications,” said Dai Jun, a structural engineer surveying the damage.

Lining the side of the road, several families had stretched sheets of white, red and blue plastic over wooden poles. “I hope the Government can give us a tent soon,” said one middle-aged man. “How can I keep my family warm and dry like this?”

The main highway from the provincial capital, Chengdu, to the devastated town of Dujiangyan and into the mountains beyond was open only to ambulances and to troops and relief workers heading to the disaster area.

One man from Chengdu had piled his car high with bottled water, instant noodles and biscuits and was planning to drive as far as he could. “I am taking this up to the people in the disaster area. The television is saying they are short of water and tents. The army will bring tents but I want to help a little with food for the victims.”

A primary school in the nearby town of Dujiangyan also collapsed. There were reports of 1,000 students and teachers killed or missing after a six-storey high school in Beichuan county crumbled into a pile of rubble. Those able to make contact with relatives in the county said the old town on a steep hillside had been buried in a landslide. The new town on the bank of a river had slid into the water.

One man with relatives in the town said: “I can only imagine how many people could have survived such a disaster.” State media said that up to 5,000 people were killed.

Zhou Chun, a 70-year-old retired mechanic, was leaving Dujiangyan with nothing but a dirty old blanket draped over his shoulders. “My wife died in the quake,” he said. “My house was destroyed. I’m going to Chengdu, but I don’t know where I’ll live.”

Rescue workers across Sichuan province sifted through tangled debris of toppled schools and homes as the death toll soared to more than 12,000 people.

In Mianyang county, officials said that more than 18,000 people were buried under the rubble. At least 26,000 people had been injured.

The numbers were set to rise as troops struggled to reach the town of Wenchuan at the heart of the devastated region. With electricity cut and telephone communications severed, news of casualties was slow to trickle out.

Thousands of troops have been ordered to parachute into Wenchuan to gain an idea of the extent of the damage and to begin rescue efforts. Another 200 were moving on foot towards the area to try to repair roads.

He Biao, director of the emergency office of the Aba government that administers Wenchuan, said that initial reports from soldiers who had to hike in showed there might be only 2,300 survivors from a population of 9,000 in the nearby town of Yinxiu.

Premier Wen Jiabao, who rushed to the area to oversee rescue efforts, said that a push was on to clear roads and restore electricity. He said that the extent of the disaster was far worse than initially feared. Speaking through a megaphone to surivivors, he vowed: “We will save the people. As long as the people are there, factories can be built into even better ones and so can the towns and counties.”

He ordered faster delivery of aid in a region where tents, water and food supplies are running short. “Please speed up the shipping of food. The kids have nothing to eat now.”

Already more than 16,000 People’s Liberation Army troops are taking part in rescue efforts and another 34,000 were being deployed to the area to reinforce the relief operation and to search for survivors.

But rescue work was being hampered by heavy spring rains that pounded the province, slowing ambulances and preventing helicopters from landing in remote villages. One rescue official said: “The biggest obstacle is severed roads.” Further impeding rescue work were aftershocks that sent people fleeing out of their homes and back on to the streets in the provincial capital, Chengdu, as well as in neighbouring towns. At least 2,354 aftershocks have been reported, including one measuring 6.1.

The disaster comes less than three months before the start of the Beijing Olympics. As a token of respect to the victims, Olympics organisers said that the torch relay through China would be simplified and begin with a minute of silence today when it sets off in the southeastern city of Ruijin.

Expressions of sympathy and offers of help poured in from across the world, and President Hu Jintao discussed the disaster in a call with US President Bush. The Government said that it would welcome outside aid but foreign aid workers would not be allowed to travel to the affected area.

Pledging aid

$123m allocated by China’s central Government so far

$4.8m pledged by Japan in relief supplies, with rescue teams on standby

$38.4m Hong Kong

$13m Macau

$1.5m Oxfam

$1m International Olympic Committee

$0.5m USA, with more to follow

— Oxfam is receiving donations through its Hong Kong branch: oxfam.org.hk/public/main

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