At least 1,000 students and teachers were buried when a school in Beichuan County in southwest China collapsed, following Monday's earthquake measuring7.8 on the Richter scale.

The main building of the Beichuan Middle School in Mianyang City, about 160 kilometers northeast of the epicenter in Wenchuan County, collapsed when the quake hit at about 2:30 p.m. and few students escaped, parents and rescuers said.

Xinhua reporters saw the building, a six- or seven-story structure, had been reduced to a pile of rubble about 2 meters high.

About 2,000 students, parents and villagers waited on campus overnight as nearly 1,000 armed police searched for survivors in the ruins. Some covered themselves with quilts as it began to rain early on Tuesday.

Many parents burst into tears when a rescuer carried a teen-age girl out of the ruins. She had lost her legs.

"I just pray my child is safe and sound," said one tearful mother. "Who cares if our house is ruined?"

Chen Linglin huddled with her first-grade classmates, waiting for help. "We need food and water more than anything else," she said.

Beichuan Middle School is in the mountains about 500 m from the county seat. It had more than 2,000 students and teachers in three buildings. The other two buildings partially collapsed.

The quake, the worst to hit China since the Tangshan quake of 1976, also toppled schools elsewhere in Sichuan and the neighboring Chongqing Municipality, trapping thousands.

Beichuan County was by far the worst-hit area in Monday's quake. Up to 7,500 people were said to have died in Beichuan, and it is believed that the final death toll will be higher.

"When the quake hit, the buildings rocked and the mountains collapsed," said a survivor surnamed Zhang. "Many buildings at the foot of the mountains were buried and the people inside had no chance to escape."

He said he feared the quake could have killed at least half of the 18,000 people in the county seat.

"I saw many people running out of buildings, only to be buried in landslides," said Lei Xiaoying, another survivor. "The landslides never stopped because of the continuous aftershocks."

Zhang and Lei were trapped for more than 10 hours in the county seat before rescuers finally cleared a road on Tuesday morning.

Hundreds of survivors, some injured, were then evacuated to safer places in neighboring Anxian County and Mianyang City. The crowds were largely quiet, except for occasional squabbles over food and drink.

Rescuers are still searching in the ruins and an immediate headcount of survivors and dead was not immediately available.

In Anchang Township, Anxian County, about 20 km from Beichuan, power, water and gas supplies were disrupted and food and drinking water have become scarce. Most stores in town have run out of supplies and many residents are living on leftovers from two days ago.

Traffic was normal on the road between Anchang and Beichuan, but vehicles lined up at every gas station in Anchang, waiting to fill their tanks.

(Xinhua News Agency May 13, 2008)