Beijing - Rescuers in south-western China's Sichuan province on Sunday found more earthquake survivors who had been buried in collapsed buildings six days, as the government announced three days of mourning for the 32,500 people confirmed dead and thousands of others believed to have died. Shen Peiyun, 50, was rescued from his collapsed office building in Sichuan's Maoxian county on Sunday afternoon after 146 hours trapped under rubble, the official Xinhua news agency said.
Shen suffered head injuries and was airlifted for treatment to Chengdu, the provincial capital, where doctors said he had a "very good chance" of recovery, the agency reported.
Rescuers found another survivor in nearby Beichuan on Sunday, 139 hours after he was buried in a collapsed building.
The man, whose wife was also rescued on Thursday, was coherent and had only minor injuries, reports said.
At least 63 people were rescued on Saturday in several areas of Sichuan.
Many people survived for up to 10 days after the 1976 earthquake in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan, which killed some 240,000 people, state media said.
The agency quoted Qian Gang, the author of a book on the Tangshan earthquake, as saying one elderly woman had survived for 13 days by drinking her own urine after she was trapped in rubble.
But in reflection of the difficulty facing rescue workers, a team in Sichuan's Yingxiu town was unable to extricate a man and a woman from a collapsed building on Sunday and could only drip glucose and water to them through the rubble, the agency said.
The government on Sunday announced the suspension of the Olympic torch relay during three days of mourning, including a three-minute silence for the victims of the earthquake on Monday afternoon.
A strong aftershock, rain and minor floods all hampered relief efforts on Sunday.
An aftershock measuring 6.0 on the Richter scale shook areas near Jiangyou city in Sichuan province at 1:08 am on Sunday (1708 GMT Saturday), the government said.
The tremor was the latest of more than 20 aftershocks of 5.0 or higher in Sichuan since the main earthquake on Monday, which government seismologists on Sunday upgraded to 8.0 on the Richter scale.
The government said the casualty toll in Sichuan and neighbouring areas had risen to 32,477 dead and 220,109 injured by Sunday afternoon.
Three natural lakes, formed after landslides blocked a river, overflowed early Sunday in Sichuan's Qingchuan county but caused no immediate danger to some 600,000 residents of towns and villages downstream, the official Xinhua news agency said.
More than 10 million cubic metres of water were estimated to have accumulated in the three lakes, the agency quoted earthquake relief officials as saying.
Water burst from another barrier lake on Friday along the Jianjiang river near Sichuan's Pengzhou city, but residents downstream were evacuated in time and no casualties were reported, the agency said.
On Saturday, residents of nearby Beichuan began rushing onto hillsides after reports that a barrier lake formed upstream was in imminent danger of flooding the town.
The river through the town had almost dried up, witnesses said, because a landslide had blocked it and formed the lake.
Xinhua said earlier Saturday the military had ordered the evacuation of injured people from the town, where only 10,000 of the 30,000 residents were reported to have survived Monday's devastating quake.
The earthquake destroyed hundreds of thousands of buildings and left some 5 million homeless.
