Rescuers pulled out a 4-year-old girl and a Tibetan woman alive from the rubble of an earthquake more than five days after they were trapped, as trucks carrying aid and equipment rolled into this shattered town in western China. China Central Television said the pair had been trapped under a bed in a collapsed mud-built house in a village about 13 miles (20 kilometers) from the hardest-hit town of Jiegu, until rescuers dug them out Monday morning. Relatives kept Wujian Cuomao, 68, and Cairen Baji alive by sending them food and water through gaps in the rubble with the help of bamboo poles, state broadcaster CCTV said. The report showed the white-haired woman waving her arms as she was lifted onto a stretcher and put in an ambulance. She was in critical condition, CCTV said, while the child was suffering from heart problems due to trauma. The death toll from the quake in Qinghai province rose to 1,944, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday. More than 12,100 people were hurt. At least 1,100 bodies were cremated or buried by Saturday, according to the provincial civil affairs department. In Jiegu, work mostly shifted from rescue to rebuilding Monday as many search teams left. Thousands of Tibetan Buddhist monks stayed, however, picking at rubble with shovels, performing funeral rites and throwing food from the backs of trucks. Convoys of military supply trucks were at a standstill, backed up for miles on the main road headed into town. At a supply depot set up on the town's edge, huge stacks of bottled water were piled up outside a warehouse. More relief goods rumbled past mountainside hamlets where residents pitched government-provided tents along a two-lane highway that is the only connection between Jiegu and the provincial capital of Xining. Bedraggled survivors streamed from their tents and chased the trucks, the women scooping bread rolls and packets of instant noodles into the aprons of their traditional fur-lined robes. Army trucks sprayed water on roads to reduce dust, and mobile toilets arrived – just in time as the spread of diseases was becoming a concern after more than five days without running water.
