Foreign rescue teams have joined the front line in the battle to free those trapped after last week's devastating earthquake in southwest China.

The second group of 29 Japanese earthquake rescuers joined their colleagues in Beichuan County, one of the worst hit areas in Sichuan Province, to continue rescue operations.

The first group of 31 well-equipped Japanese rescuers arrived at Qingchuan on Friday afternoon before leaving for Beichuan.

With the help of fiber scopes, grabs and drilling equipment, they dug out the corpses of two victims, Song Aimei and her 70-day-old baby, from the debris of a dormitory after 16 hours of work.

They had found no signs of life in the building which belonged to the Qingchuan County Hospital of Chinese Traditional Medicine, according to a Xinhua reporter who witnessed the rescue work.

Takashi Koizumi, head of the Japanese team, expressed condolences, and said he regretted not being able to find anyone alive.

Also in Sichuan, rescuers from the Republic of Korea (ROK) recovered two bodies from the debris of the Hongda chemical plant in the Yinghua township of Shifang where two chemical plants were destroyed in the earthquake, leaking 80 tons of ammonia and forcing more than 6,000 people to evacuate.

The 41-member ROK rescue team arrived at Shifang around midnight on Friday with life detection equipment, breathing apparatus, gas masks and searching dogs.

"We will give 100 percent even if there is just one percent of hope," said the team head surnamed Kim, an experienced disaster relief worker.

Russian and Singaporean rescue teams are also at work in some of the worst hit areas, and the Russians are the first foreign team to find a survivor in Dujiangyan, a city near Chengdu.

Meanwhile, international emergency aid continued to flow into the quake zone. A third batch of tents and food was expected to arrive in Chengdu, the provincial capital, from Russia yesterday. Russia had flown in 60 tons of aid in two flights on Wednesday and Thursday.

Two Pakistan military aircraft arrived in Chengdu on Friday carrying tents, blankets, bottled water and medicine. A planeload of aid from Singapore is also expected.

(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2008)