Premier Wen Jiabao(C) arranges relief work with officials onboard the plane to quake-stricken area on May 12, 2008.

Xinhua said in a news flash that in Sichuan Province alone, which was hit the hardest, the death toll there has risen to nearly 10,000. And in the neighboring provinces as Gansu and Shaanxi, nearly 200 were confirmed dead, according to a Xinhua report.

The Sichuan provincial seismological bureau said more than 1,180 tremors up to six magnitude have been recorded as of 5:00 am on Tuesday.

The government in Shifang City of Deyang City, where a major chemical leak happened after the quake, said about 600 people died, including 81 students. The government expected that as many as 2,300 people are still buried, including 920 students.

In Anxian County of Mianyang City, about 500 people died, and 85 percent of the houses in rural areas collapsed.

In another badly-hit city of Mianzhu, which is less than 50 kilometers away from the quake epicenter, more than 1,000 people were reported dead and another 5,000 were buried as of 11:30 pm on Monday, according to the local government.

Hanwang Township of Mianzhu, which is less than 30 kilometers away from Wenchuan and has a population of more than 60,000, suffered serious casualties though exact number is not available.

Zheng Zemin, deputy secretary-general with the Mianzhu Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, said the city is in desperate need of drinking water, food, medicines, tents and professional rescuers and equipments.

Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had just completed a 5-day official visit to Japan, has ordered prompt rescue efforts to take care of the affected. Premier Wen Jiaobao has cut short his inspection trip in central Henan Province, and have flown to Chengdu to lead the government rescue efforts.

Late Monday evening, President Hu urged governments at all levels to regard relieving major quake as the top priority at a Politburo standing committee meeting on late Monday evening.

Presided over by Hu, the meeting called on disaster relieving personnel to go to the quake hit areas as soon as possible and mount all-out efforts to save the injured.

And in Dujiangyan, Premier Wen Jiabao has pledged to save as many lives as the rescue teams can in southwest China's Sichuan Province which was hit by a major quake on Monday afternoon.

Wen inspected a hospital and a school in Dujiangyan, a city northwest of the provincial capital Chengdu, partly damaged by the quake.

The road from Dujiangyan to Wenchuan, epicenter of the quake, was blocked by rock and mud slides, holding up rescue, medical and other disaster relief teams in the city.

The rescuers were stranded about 10 kilometers from the county.

"Please just hold on, people are going to get you out of there! " the Premier told the people trapped in the collapsed buildings of the hospital in a loudspeaker.

When comforting patients and medical staffs in the hospital, Wen asked rescuing troops to search every corner for people waiting for salvation and carry out the rescue work in an orderly way.

"If there is a gleam of hope, we will do all the best to save the people," Wen vowed at a middle school of Juyuan town, adding that the rescuing team would not rest until the last one under the ruin was saved.

"The medical experts are coming, the rescuing planes will land soon," Wen told people crying for help in the school, "I was told many trapped people have hopes to survive from the disaster."

He made a three-time bow to pay his respect to the bodies of the people killed by the quake laid on the school's square, saying that he was very depressed.

Premier Wen told officials at the temporary headquarters for disaster relief in Dujiangyan that roads to Wenchuan should be recovered as soon as possible at all costs.

"The road is the key for the relief work since we can only know the situation there when we can send people and we can only transport the injured out when the road is clean," Wen said.

China's state seimological administration reported the earthquake hit Sichuan Province at 2:28 pm Beijing Time Monday, at a destructive scale of 7.8 on the Richter calculations. The US Geologocial Survey said on its website that the epicentre lies 29 kilometres below the surface, and at a scale of 7.5.

More than 5,000 PLA officers and soliders and 3,000 police have also rushed to Wenchuan and surrounding areas to spearhead the rescue efforts.

Premier Wen told reporters during his flight to Sichuan that the central government is  closely monitoring the disaster relief work, and Wen urged for calm, efficiency and confidence in fighting the killer tremor.

"I will be in charge of relief work headquarters that has been set up with eight State Council departments," Wen said.

Chinese reporters in Juyuan town, about 60 miles from the epicenter, said that they saw trapped teenagers struggling to break loose from underneath the rubble of the three-story building "while others were crying out for help."

Two teenage girl students were quoted as saying they escaped because they had "run faster than others."

Sleepless Night

Many residents in Chengdu and elsewhere near Sichuan are expected to stay out-doors or in makeshift beds, as they fear more follow-up quakes.

An employee of chinadaily.com.cn, who happens to be in Chengdu on a business trip there, said hotel administration has instructed all tenants to keep away from their rooms. The employee said more than 50 are staying in the first-floor lobby.

"We felt continuous shaking for about two or three minutes. All the people in our office are rushing downstairs. We're still feeling slight tremblings," said an office worker in Chengdu, when the tremor struck.

Provincial officials said that the temblor struck hilly and foresty countryside leading up to the mountains, toppling buildings in small cities and towns in the largely rural area.

With a population of 111,800, Wenchuan County lies in southeast part of the Tibetan-Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba, 145 km to the northwest of Chengdu. Wenchuan is home to the Wolong Nature Reserve, China's leading research and breeding base of the endangered giant pandas.