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As ground rumbles, China keeps digging

BEIJING - China's military said it has evacuated 205,371 people from areas hit by the country's deadliest earthquake in 32 years, as aftershocks disrupted relief efforts in Sichuan province.

BEIJING - China's military said it has evacuated 205,371 people from areas hit by the country's deadliest earthquake in 32 years, as aftershocks disrupted relief efforts in Sichuan province.

The death toll increased to 32,477, the state-run Xinhua news agency said yesterday.

Amid the grim accounting, China's 1.3 billion people were asked to observe three minutes of silence today as the country began three days of mourning for the quake victims.

Military personnel had pulled 21,566 people from the rubble in the six days since the quake, Ministry of Defense spokesman Hu Changming told journalists in Beijing yesterday.

Other government reports yesterday said the quake injured 220,109, according to the latest official tally, and leveled more than 4.7 million houses in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi provinces.

Sichuan's civil affairs office had provided shelter to 4.8 million displaced people at 2,885 locations as of yesterday, the government said.

The National Development and Reform Commission, in a statement on its Web site yesterday, estimated that 10 million people would need food rations for three months. It said it was working on a plan to transport more grain to the area.

Shen Peiyun, 53, was pulled out of the rubble in Yingxiu town in Wenchuan county near the epicenter 148 hours after the quake, Xinhua said yesterday. Only three others have been found alive since Saturday and one of those has since died.

Three giant pandas were missing from the Wolong Nature Reserve for the endangered animals. Five staff members were killed in the quake, forestry spokesman Cao Qingyao told Xinhua. The 60 other giant pandas at the reserve were safe.