Exhausted rescuers have pulled out more survivors who had been trapped for almost six days in the rubble left by Monday's devastating southwest China earthquake.
A man was rescued at 9:15 a.m. Sunday from a collapsed hospital of Beichuan County, Sichuan Province, 139 hours after the quake, which had left a confirmed death toll of 32,477 as of 2 p.m. Sunday.
Tang Xiong, who suffered only slight bruises, was still conscious when he was pulled out, said rescuers. His wife was rescued on Thursday.
Also in Beichuan, another man was rescued at 9:55 p.m. on Saturday from a collapsed building, 127 hours after the tremor.
Wu Jianping had been sent to hospital for treatment, said sources with the Chengdu Military Area Command on Sunday.
A group of soldiers from the Chengdu Military Area Command discovered Wu at 8 a.m. on Saturday and rescue efforts concluded at 9:55 p.m.
The same group of soldiers had rescued 13 stranded survivors after they arrived at quake-hit regions on Wednesday.
In Dujiangyan, a quake-hit city near the epicenter Wenchuan County,Zhang Xiaoping, 46, was pulled from a collapsed residential building at about 11:06 p.m. Saturday, after being buried for almost 129 hours.
Before he was rescued, doctors were forced to amputate Zhang's lower legs firmly stuck in the rubble after other rescue plans failed.
Two doctors managed to get into the tight space and carried out the amputations in about an hour.
Zhang, who was still conscious, was carefully carried out by firefighters amid applause and immediately sent to hospital for further treatment.
However, despite the joint rescue efforts, he died at 1:05 a.m. in hospital due to heart failure.
A 61-year-old woman, who had been buried for 127 hours, was saved from a ruined dormitory building in Dujiangyan by Russian rescuers late Saturday night.
She was the first survivor found by a foreign rescue team.
Although the time for the best chance of rescue, the first 72 hours after an earthquake, had passed, "saving people's lives is still the top priority of the relief work", President Hu Jintao said on Saturday night.
"We should put people first," Hu told local government and central government department officials at an overnight meeting in Chengdu.
Hu flew to Sichuan on Friday from Beijing to inspect and oversee relief work in the worst-hit areas.
The government has mobilized rescue staff to conduct thorough searches in quake-ravaged villages for possible survivors and to never give up.
Qian Gang, author of the book Tangshan Earthquake, said 72-hour period was just an average time, as many people had survived for much longer.
Qian, who spent ten years interviewing survivors of the Tangshan earthquake that claimed more than 240,000 lives in 1976 in Hebei Province, said it was possible that people could live after being buried for more than eight days if they had the will to survive.
He cited the case that an old Chinese woman who drank her own urine to sustain her for 13 days until rescuers pulled her out of the debris.
(Xinhua News Agency May 18, 2008)