Around 3:00 AM Saturday. The only noises resounding in the deadly quietness in the Qingchuan County seat, devastated by an enormous earthquake, were the rumbles of an excavator.

Japanese rescuers, the first group of foreign rescue professionals to arrive in the quake-stricken province, were searching for a mother Song Aimei and her 70-day-old daughter in the debris of a building at Jiefang Street.

In Qingchuan, the death toll was approaching 1,900 after the 7.8-magnitude earthquake battered southwest China's Sichuan Province Monday afternoon and was felt in many parts of the country.

The mother and baby had been buried for more than 110 hours and the 31 Japanese rescuers had worked around the clock since they arrived 24 hours before.

"I have never seen so grim situation in Japan," said a rescuer surnamed Nakajima.

The six-story building was where the employees of the county's traditional Chinese medicine hospital and their families lived. The quake turned it into piles of debris some three meters high.

As of 2:00 PM on Saturday, 28,881 people were confirmed dead nationwide in the massive earthquake and the death toll is estimated to exceed 50,000.

The Japanese team, all dressed in orange-blue uniforms, had found no life sign under the ruins with the life searching and location device and they decided to use large excavators to speedup the rescue effort at 5 p.m. on Friday.

"Now, the chance for the victims to survive is very slim, but we also had precedents to find survivors days after being trapped. So, we won't give up," said Takashi Koizumi, head of the Japanese team.

Local quake survivors volunteered to send the rescuers supper in the evening, together with instant noodles and boiled water. The Japanese finally got something warm to eat since their arrival.

"Please express our sincere gratitude to them. Thanks for coming to help us from so far away," a young man, who only gave his surname Wei, told Xinhua reporters at the site.

Most residents like Wei in the county seat became homeless after the quake and they stay overnight in tents or temporary shelters built with tarpaulin.

"The government has provided us with plenty of food and water. We are striving to be optimistic," said Wei.

The rescue operation never went smooth as aftershocks, measuring up to 4.0 magnitude, frequently shook the fragile wrecks of collapsed buildings and the small cement blocks rained down.

However, the rescuers did not quit and they worked in turn in three groups. Those off-duty rescuers slept on the ground with their uniforms on.

"We are rescuers and we should be prepared to work anytime when needed," said a rescuer Tugumasa Muraoka.

While rescuers were removing the cement pieces with hands where tools were unable to reach, locals gathered near the security line at the site, watching and waiting.

At 7:25 a.m. Saturday, the bodies of Song and her daughter were recovered. They were wrapped with quilts and were later put on the floor in a nearby building.

All the Japanese rescuers, lowering head and closing eyes, stood by the bodies in two lines and mourned for the victims. Song's husband, who had been watching the rescue all night, knelt down on the ground and wept by his dead wife.

"I'm sorry we have not find anyone alive and we would like to send our deepest condolence to the families of the victims," said Takashi Koizumi.

However, their courage and professionalism won the hearts of local Chinese.

"They had tried their best and they gave me the last chance to see my daughter. they are heroes of my family," said Zhang Xiangling, 55, Song's mother.

Takashi Koizumi's team was joined by a second group of 29 well-equipped Japanese earthquake rescuers and three sniffer dogs in Qingchuan at noon on Saturday and later they all left for Beichuan, another badly-hit county where at least 7,000 people were said to die in the quake.

The newcomers include two females. Some team members participated the rescue operations in the Iran earthquake in 2003 and the Indonesia tsunami in 2006.

"We hope that we can arrive at Beichuan as soon as possible. The top priority is to rescue the survivors and we still have confidence," said Kawatami Yoko, one of the two females who is also a nurse.

The 60-member Japanese rescue team arrived at Beichuan, about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter, at 10:00 PM on Saturday by bus.

They would carry out rescue operation at a collapsed middle school at Qushan Town where more than 700 students were still trapped.

"I have been deeply impressed by the prompt and transparent response of the Chinese government and the unity and cooperative spirit of Chinese people after the quake happened," said Fujimoto Masaya, deputy director of the China office of the Japan International Cooperation Agency, one of the organizers of the Japanese rescue team.

"We will try our best to offer help," he said,

More than 200 foreign rescuers from Japan, Russia, the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Singapore are in Sichuan to help with rescue and relief.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2008)