China holding 3 days of mourning for quake victims

BEICHUAN, China — China declared three days of national mourning for earthquake victims and ordered a suspension of the Olympic torch relay, as the search for survivors of the disaster grew bleak Sunday.

The State Council said the mourning period would start Monday and include three minutes of silence observed nationwide at 2:28 p.m., the time the quake struck.

Beijing Olympic organizers said in a statement that the torch relay would be suspended "to express our deep mourning to the victims of the earthquake."

The relay already had resumed last week after the quake on a more somber note, with runners starting with a minute of silence and asking for donations along the route. Organizers have said the relay would go on as planned in quake-hit Sichuan province next month.

In the disaster zone, efforts appeared to shift Sunday from searching for buried survivors to clearing corpses from shattered buildings as the government said the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476.

Another 220,109 people suffered injuries, according to a statement from the State Council, China's Cabinet. The government has said it expects the final death toll will surpass 50,000.

Rescuers amputated the legs of a woman to rescue her after six days trapped under a flattened power plant in Yingxiu town, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. A man survived with head injuries after being pulled from a collapsed office building in Maoxian county to the northeast, and was expected to recover.

A "slightly bruised" man also was saved from a collapsed hospital after being trapped for 139 hours, the agency said.

In Beichuan town near the quake's epicenter, few hopeful relatives were seen in Beichuan, where several dozen corpses in blue body bags lay in a street. Soldiers regularly pulled more dead from the wreckage.

"It will soon be too late" to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team that pulled 10 bodies from a flattened school Sunday. "We hope with our hard work we will find more people alive."

A "slightly bruised" man was pulled out alive from a collapsed hospital Sunday after being trapped for 139 hours, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. Experts say buried earthquake survivors can live a week or more, depending on factors including the temperature and whether they have water to drink.