By John Ruwitch
MIANZHU, China (Reuters) - China struggled to bury the deadand help tens of thousands of injured, homeless and hungry onFriday, four days after a massive earthquake which is expectedto have killed more than 50,000.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao called on officials to ensuresocial stability as frustration and exhaustion grew amongsurvivors, many of whom lost everything and are living inmakeshift tents or in the open air.
Anger has also focused on the state of school buildings,many of which crumpled, burying hundreds of children, when thequake struck, prompting China's Housing Ministry to order aninvestigation.
In the village of Houzhuang in the south-western provinceof Sichuan, the area worst hit by Monday's 7.9 magnitude quake,residents said they were coping on their own, with aid andtroops yet to reach them.
"We ate some corn, but now we are suffering from diarrhoeaafter drinking water from the ditch for two days," said aHouzhuang resident surnamed Liu.
He said more than 90 percent of the buildings in hisvillage, in the hard-hit county of Anxian, were flattened.
"Now we've been trying to get things out of the debris touse, like clothes, but we're very frightened that there will beanother earthquake, so we have to be very careful," he said.
China has mobilised 130,000 army and paramilitary troops tothe disaster area, but the quake buckled roads and triggeredmountain landslides, meaning that relief supplies and rescuershave struggled to reach the worst-hit areas.
From the heart of the disaster zone, Wen urged rescuers on,but hopes were fading for those still trapped under rubble.
"It is still within the critical period of saving lives,and we won't give up even if there exists the slightest hope offinding more survivors," Xinhua quoted Wen as saying.
But some expressed frustration at the resources still beingdevoted to finding survivors among the some 25,000 who remainburied. Officials said another 20,000 have died in the quake.
"The focus is on saving lives, and they say food and aplace to live are small issues as long as you're alive," saidFan Xiaohua, who was organising volunteers at a reliefcoordination centre in Mianzhu. "In fact, they are very bigissues right now."
Relief workers said food, water and tents were urgentlyneeded.
COLLAPSED SCHOOLS
President Hu Jintao headed to Sichuan on Friday to meetvictims and inspect the rescue and relief effort, Xinhua said.It will be his first trip to the region since the disasterstruck.
Anger has also focused on the school collapses.
In the town of Dujiangyan, a school collapse buried 900students. In Wufu, nearly every building in the villagewithstood the quake but for a primary school, whose collapsekilled some 300 students.
"Our child wasn't killed by the earthquake. She and theothers were killed by a derelict building. The officials knewit was unsafe," said Bi Kaiwei, whose 13-year-old daughter wasamong the dead.
There were concerns as well about epidemics if the deadwere not soon buried or cremated.
"We are in urgent need of body bags," Bai Licheng, aCommunist Party official in Sichuan's Yingxiu, told Xinhua.
"Air-dropped food and drinking water are limited and farfrom meeting the demand," he added.
Bodies were lined up along the town's riverbank in Yingxiu,where more than 3,000 soldiers were searching for survivors.
The Ministry of Health issued a notice ordering bodies tobe cleaned where they were found and buried as soon aspossible, far from water sources and downwind from populatedareas.
Bai said bodies were still trapped in the debris andblocked roads meant that heavy lifting gear could not getthrough.
Hundreds of damaged dams have also raised fears of collapseor flooding that could inundate towns and cities that arealready struggling to recover from the quake.
The country's top economic planner allocated 53 millionyuan (3.9 million pounds) on Friday in emergency funds toassess the damage to reservoirs.
China has asked the United States for satellite images tohelp locate victims and identify damaged infrastructure. InSichuan and neighbouring Chongqing, reservoirs have beendamaged, some dams have cracked or are leaking water, andofficials have warned the full extent of the hazard was as yetunclear.
China was accepting foreign help to bolster rescue effortsin the disaster, the deadliest since up to 300,000 people werekilled in a 1976 earthquake in the north-eastern Chinese cityof Tangshan.
The first foreign rescue team, a group of about 60 peoplefrom Japan, reached Sichuan on Friday. China has acceptedfurther offers of rescue teams from Russia, South Korea andSingapore, the Foreign Ministry said.
(Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Shifang, EmmaGraham-Harrison in Yingxiu, and Jason Li in Houzhuang; Writingby Lindsay Beck; Editing by Nick Macfie and David Fox)
