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Military helicopters dropped food and medicine to Chinese earthquake survivors who remained cut off Wednesday in remote mountain villages behind roads clogged by landslides. The official death toll of more than 12,000 appeared certain to soar as several thousand more bodies were found.
Some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive in delicate rescues. But the number of bodies grew along with survivors’ frustrations in finding out what happened to thousands of missing.
The scale of devastation became clearer as more rescuers walked into the hardest-hit areas of central Sichuan province, finding towns where 80 percent of the population fell victim to Monday’s magnitude 7.9 quake.
The official Xinhua News Agency reported 7,700 people died in Yingxiu town, near the epicenter. It was unclear if the new figure was in addition to overall toll.
Xinhua also reported that 178 children were confirmed dead in one school in Qingchuan in northern Sichuan. The agency added that the confirmed death toll for Mianyang city rose to 5,430 on Wednesday. More than 18,000 people there were still thought to be buried under crushed buildings.
Government officials told Xinhua rescuers who hiked into the Wenchuan county town of Yingxiu found it “much worse than expected.”
Xinhua said the survivors in Yingxiu “desperately needed medical help, food and water.”
Roads leading to Wenchuan from all directions were still being cleared of debris, Feng Zhenglin, deputy minister of railway and transportation, said in Beijing.
Relief efforts were aided in their third day by the clearing of storms that had prevented flights over some of the worst-hit towns. Military helicopters seen flying north over Dujiangyan, and Xinhua said two of them airdropped food, drinking water and medicine to Yingxiu.
A 3-year-old girl who was trapped for more than 40 hours under the bodies of her parents in Beichuan region was pulled to safety, Xinhua said.
Rescuers found Song Xinyi on Tuesday morning, but were unable to pull her out right away due to fears the debris above her would collapse. She was fed and shielded from the rain until rescuers extricated her from the rubble.
Premier Wen Jiabao looked over her wounds, part of his highly publicized tour of the disaster area aimed at reassuring the public about the government’s response and to show it is ready to host the Beijing Olympics in August. Wednesday’s leg of the Olympic torch relay in the southeastern city of Ruijin began with a minute of silence.

Wen said some 100,000 troops and police had been dispatched to the disaster zone. He also visited a school Wednesday in Beichuan where two classroom buildings collapsed in the earthquake, including a school with 2,000 students that state TV said sustained “heavy casualties.”
East of the epicenter in the town of Hanwang, about 60 bodies wrapped in plastic were laid out as sobbing relatives walked among them. Feet and hands were sticking through the plastic wrapped around some of the bodies.
Some were covered with tree branches or flowers, and relatives burned paper money to be used in the afterlife.
As people mourned, rescue workers in blue uniforms continued to bring out bodies they have had been keeping in the Dongqi sports arena. It was unclear whether the corpses were from Hanwang or elsewhere.
Most of the buildings in Hanwang, which is surrounded by mountains, had been left in twisted piles by the quake, and cranes were tearing down what was left of any buildings still standing.
Farther north in An Xian, on the road to Beichuan, a hard-hit area on the edge of the quake’s epicenter, a group of survivors huddled by the road in a makeshift tent to protect them from the rain.
Government buses have carried some survivors out of Beichuan, but Li Zizhong, a 38-year-old farmer, said he had not heard from his relatives there yet.
“Who knows what happened to them,” Li said. “All we need is a little something to eat. I’m just happy to be alive.”
Li and a friend, Zhang Mingfu, 44, had built a wood and plastic shelter with a straw floor where about 30 family members spent the night. Their destroyed homes were in the background.
“I feel lucky. It’s the people in the mountains that we are worrying about, they are our relatives,” Zhang said.
Authorities had blocked the road to Beichuan to regular traffic to allow rescue vehicles access.
China also reported Wednesday that a 3-year-old Taiwanese boy was among the victims. Taiwan Affairs Office spokesman Li Weiyi said two other Taiwanese were hurt in the quake.