As the death toll in southwest China rose to almost 32,500, the government today ordered a three-day period of national mourning for the victims of the country’s worst earthquake in three decades. Communist Party leaders also announced that the Beijing Olympic torch relay would be delayed for the mourning period.

The torch was carried over the finishing line of the Hangzhou leg today by the athlete, Wu Xiaoxuan, China’s first Olympic gold medal winner. From the east coast city, the torch was due to travel north to the port city of Ningbo and then to Shanghai.

The government ordered all flags to be flown at half mast and insisted that “public amusements will be suspended,” China's state news agency reported. At 2.28pm tomorrow - exactly one week after the earthquake, today revised from 7.9-magnitude to 8 by the China Seismological Bureau - the country is to observe three minutes of silence, while cars, trains, and ships sound their horns.

But as the rest of the country mourns, the hundreds of thousands of rescuers and volunteers in the quake region will be carrying on with the traumatic task of digging up the 10,000 people still unaccounted for. 160 hours after being crushed in their homes and schools, it is increasingly unlikely that any of them will be found alive. The final body count is expected to rise to more than 50,000.

Those that did survive now find themselves faced with the triple task of burying the bodies, healing the 220,109 injured and dealing with the threat of disease, flood, hunger and homelessness. A government official said today that the quake had blocked rivers and streams in 21 places.

"Currently there are 21 blockages caused by landslides and we have experts monitoring them 24 hours a day," said Li Chengyun, vice governor of Sichuan province.

In the days following the earthquake, the area has also suffered 145 aftershocks measuring four or higher on the Richter scale. In the early hours of this morning, a 6.1-magnitude shock centered in Sichuan’s Jiangyou City killed a further three people.

The disaster has affected wildlife too. After previous reports that Sichuan province’s highly prized panda population was safe, it emerged today that three giant pandas are missing from Wolong Panda Reserve, 30 miles from Monday’s epicentre.

Cao Yingyao, an official at the State Forestry Administration, said that the reserve’s 60 other pandas were safe, but five staff members had been killed in the earthquake and three animals were unaccounted for.

The quake also destroyed or severely damaged all 32 of the reserve's panda houses.

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