The official Xinhua News Agency said some 2 000 soldiers were sent to repair "extremely dangerous" cracks in the Zipingpu Dam upriver from the earthquake-hit city of Dujiangyan.

The government said late yesterday that experts had inspected the dam and declared it safe, according to a statement broadcast on state TV and posted on the Sichuan government Web site.

China's top economic planning body said that the quake had damaged 391 mostly small dams.

He Biao, the director of the Aba Disaster Relief headquarters in northern Sichuan province, said there were concerns over dams close to the epicenter.

"Currently, the most dangerous problems are several reservoirs near Wenchuan," he said, according to a transcript on the CCTV Web site.

"There are already serious problems with the Tulong Reservoir on the Min River.

It may collapse.

If that happens, it would affect several power plants below and be extremely dangerous," he said.

Help also began to arrive by helicopter and on foot in some of the hardest-to-reach areas, where some victims trapped for more than two days under collapsed buildings were still being pulled out alive.

But the enormous scale of the devastation meant that resources were stretched thin, and makeshift aid stations and refugee centers were springing up over the disaster area the size of Belgium.

The death toll of nearly 15 000 appeared likely to soar far higher.

Leveled hospitals forced doctors and nurses to treat survivors in the street.

Helicopters dropped food and medicine to isolated towns.

Mourners burned money before rows of bodies, believing their lost relatives could use it in the afterlife.

Xinhua quoted government officials as saying rescuers who yesterday hiked into the city of Yingxiu in Wenchuan county - the epicentre of the quake - found only 2 300 survivors in the town of about 10 000, with another 1 000 badly hurt.

The official death toll rose yesterday to 14 866, Xinhua said, but it was not immediately clear if that number included the 7 700 reported dead in Yingxiu.

In Sichuan province alone, another 25 788 people were buried and 1 405 were missing, provincial vice governor Li Chengyun said, according to Xinhua.

Twelve Americans were found safe near the epicenter of the quake.

A spokeswoman for the World Wildlife Fund said the 12 members of the wildlife group were reached by satellite phone earlier in the day.

The team was near the world's most famous panda preserve in Wolong, whose pandas were reported safe Tuesday.

Unlike previous natural disasters in China, official media have reported prominently on the quake and state TV cancelled regular programming to run 24-hour coverage.

Nampa-AP

World News Headlines Of The Last 48 Hours