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Yinghua/Beichuan: Rescue crews pulled a man from a collapsed building yesterday exactly 100 hours after China's biggest earthquake in a generation but were forced to amputate an arm and a leg in a desperate bid to save his life.
Rescue workers, army troops and a tense crowd of about 100 onlookers erupted in wild cheers and applause as Liu Deyun was pulled from the rubble of a collapsed factory building after a 12-hour rescue effort that gripped this quake-pulverised town since early morning.
Meanwhile, Chinese President Hu Jintao, visiting the quake zone yesterday, said relief work had entered "the most crucial phase."
More survivors
"It was a miracle, but miracles happen through hard work and this happened through our hard work," said Zhao Hongxing, an army doctor who was involved in saving Liu.
After Liu was whisked away in an ambulance, rescuers quickly went back to work digging for two more people in the same rubble.
In another timely rescue, a child trapped for over 80 hours in the rubble of a collapsed school was saved in Beichuan town, state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The report said rescuers could hear more voices calling for help in the rubble and were "expecting more miracles" but did not specify the child's age or gender.
Meanwhile, a strong aftershock sparked landslides yesterday near the epicentre of Monday's 7.9-magnitude earthquake, again cutting off ravaged areas of central China.
Strong aftershock
The official Xinhua News Agency said vehicles on a road leading to central Sichuan province had been buried by the fresh tremors but the number of casualties was not immediately known. The US Geological Survey said the latest tremor had registered 5.5 on the Richter scale and was centered some 10 kilometres below the surface, a relatively shallow quake, like the initial disaster.
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