Some people carried their aged parents on wheelbarrows. "Our town is badly in need of drugs and drinking water," survivors told the reporters.

"We saw PLA soldiers and armed police marching toward the disaster-hit area one group after another, and lots of ordinary people from the direction of Dujiangyan and migrant workers from other parts of the country coming to the rescue of their relatives," said one of the reporters.

Reporter Xu Zhuangzhi helicoptered to the county seat of Wenchuan at 10:22 a.m. and then flew to Yingxiu with PLA soldiers to carry injured people.

"I saw the town was reduced to piles of rubble with almost no buildings intact when we arrived at Yingxiu," said Xu.

"A school building which is beside the clearing where we landed was completely destroyed," said Xu.

Eight injured people were carried into the helicopter including two teenagers.

A 14-year-old girl was carried in, and put beside a boy with a broken leg. He tried to make some room for the girl in the cramped helicopter and sweated in pain. "I held the girl's hand and she smiled back," Xu said. "I knew she was a strong girl."

"It's a pity the supplies we could bring are limited," said head of the helicopter brigade Tang Chun. They had tried but failed to fly to Wenchuan for the past two days because of bad weather.

However, Xu said, the county seat of Wenchuan and neighbouring Maoxian County did not look as seriously damaged as Yingxiu. He could see from the helicopter most of the buildings seemed to be intact.

As of 4:00 p.m., the air force of the Chengdu Military Area Command flew 32 helicopters on Wednesday to drop 12.8 tonnes of supplies in Wenchuan's county seat, Yingxiu town of Wenchuan, and the counties of Maoxian and Lixian, and carried 47 patients back to Chengdu.

Meanwhile, reporter Zhu Yingtao arrived at Yingxiu at around 11:30 a.m., also with PLA soldiers, traveling by boat and on foot.

They saw hundreds of people fleeing the town. "They all looked to be on the edge of collapsing because of fear and fatigue," said Zhu.

"I saw an almost 100-meter road bridge, which had broken and fallen into the Minjiang River near the town," said Zhu. The bridge was later identified as Baihua Bridge.

He said he saw rubble and debris from collapsed houses and buildings along the river during a boat trip from Chengdu to Wenchuan.

(Xinhua News Agency May 14, 2008)