More students have been found buried at a school in Dujiangyan City, one of the worst-hit cities in Sichuan, as rescue operations continue.

Officials in the Xiang'e Township middle school in Dujiangyan, about 100 km from epicenter Wenchuan, said fewer than 100 students out of 420 students survived after a powerful quake brought down a major teaching building in the school.

Towards dawn, rescuers were disassembling the debris to recover the bodies of students stuck in misshaped cement structures. Blood stains were seen at some of the distorted steel bars from the building.

The fresh reports added to an earlier account that 900 students were feared buried in building wreckages in the Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan Township in Dujiangyan.

As of 3 AM on Tuesday, rescuers had recovered more than 60 bodies.

More than 1,000 people, including armed policemen, were rescuing the buried victims. Eight excavators and five cranes were brought in for rescue work and an ambulance waited.

The 7.8-magnitude quake, which struck Sichuan at 2:28 PM on Monday, has left more than 8,500 people dead in Sichuan. Severe casualties were also reported in neighboring provinces.

The Chinese government launched emergency rescue operations in the quake-jolted zones. Premier Wen Jiabao arrived in Chengdu on Monday afternoon and is in Dujiangyan to direct the rescue work.

China's Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Ministry of Finance have allocated 200 million yuan (about US$28.6 million) for disaster relief work. Medical workers and troops have been sent in to reinforce search and rescue operations.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2008)