基本信息
江苏省黄桥中学2008年
高三英语汶川地震阅读专集
China to launch three-day mourning period
BEICHUAN, China - China will spend three days marking the moment when tens of thousands died in a devastating earthquake, while hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled Sunday and preventing hunger and disease became more pressing.
The government announced an official mourning period starting Monday and asked Chinas 1.3 billion people to observe three minutes of silence starting at 2:28 p.m. — exactly one week after the quake killed an estimated 50,000.
The Olympic torch relay — a potent symbol of national pride in the countdown to Augusts much anticipated Beijing games — also will be suspended during the mourning period, the organizing committee said.
As the second week of Chinas worst disaster in a generation approached, the search for anyone left alive in the rubble turned glum despite remarkable survival tales among thousands who were buried.
"It will soon be too late" to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team working in Beichuan, a town reduced to rubble. His team pulled 10 bodies out of Beichuans high school Sunday.
The steady run of rescue news flashed by the official Xinhua News Agency has slowed. Just three rescues were reported Sunday, including a woman in Yingxiu town who was reached by soldiers who dug a 15-foot tunnel through the wreckage of a flattened power station and had to amputate both her legs to set free, after 150 hours.
