China quake toll exceeds 12,000

BEIJING (AFP) - The death toll from a powerful earthquake in China has exceeded 12,000 in Sichuan province alone, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday, quoting the local government.
The number of dead from the 7.9-magnitude quake, which struck Sichuan on Monday, had reached more than 12,000 as of 4:00 pm (0800 GMT) on Tuesday, Xinhua said.
Chinese soldiers and relief workers trudged through rugged terrain and driving rain on Tuesday in a frantic race to reach devastated communities cut off by a powerful earthquake.
The United Nations is ready to send aid if China seeks help in dealing with the aftermath of the massive earthquake that rocked the country's southwest, a UN spokeswoman said Tuesday.
Meanwhile, French nuclear experts on Tuesday said damage to nuclear facilities close to the epicentre of China's massive earthquake could not immediately be ruled out.
The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety said it was unlikely that China's four nuclear power plants — Daya Bay and Lingao in the south, Qinshan in the east and Tianwan in the northeast — had been badly damaged.
They are all more than 1,000 kilometres from the epicentre, which was in the southwestern province of Sichuan.
China's massive army is spearheading the desperate relief effort following Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake in the country's southwest, with 54,000 People's Liberation Army troops in the disaster zone or on their way.
A national blood drive also was launched to supply the tens of thousands of survivors, while the nation's private airlines were called in to transport aid, and the Red Cross Society of China appealed to all Chinese for cash donations. However, bad weather and the destruction of roads severely hampered the effort, forcing relief teams to hike into areas ravaged by the quake, which has killed nearly 12,000 people so far and reduced schools and factories to rubble.
The PLA had planned to parachute troops and supplies into areas at the quake's epicentre, a mountainous county in Sichuan province called Wenchuan with a population of just over 100,000 people. But heavy rain and clouds scuttled those plans, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.