China ordered 101 more helicopters into the air today and planned aid drops into remote areas of Sichuan province as it struggled to cope with the powerful earthquake that has directly affected 10 million people.

Thousands of troops are tonight fighting to plug dangerous cracks in a dam above an earthquake-hit Chinese town.

More than 50,000 people may have died in China’s earthquake, the government admitted today.

Soldiers who hiked over landslide-blocked roads to reach the epicentre of China’s devastating earthquake searched through collapsed buildings today for survivors, with the death toll certain to rise to near 20,000 as the buried are found.

China began airlifting aid today to the areas worst hit by a massive earthquake, as new reports of casualties were poised to push the death toll close to 20,000.

Rescue workers sifted through tangled debris of toppled schools and homes today for thousands of victims buried or missing after China’s worst earthquake in three decades, as the death toll soared to more than 12,000 people in the hardest-hit province alone.

The official death toll in the Chinese earthquake rose to 12,000 today with thousands more still missing amid reports of strong aftershocks in the region.

Chinese state media have reported that 10,000 people “remain buried” in Mianzhu near the epicentre of the earthquake that has already killed about 10,000.

The death toll from a powerful earthquake in central China has climbed to nearly 10,000 in the worst-hit province, state news reports said today.

A powerful earthquake toppled buildings, schools and a chemical plant in China today, killing more than 8,700 people and trapping untold numbers in mounds of concrete, steel and earth.

Rescuers recovered more than 30 bodies at the site of a highway construction accident in southwestern China, bringing the death toll to 42, the government said today.