Mourning to last 3 days

BEICHUAN, China – Flags flew at half-staff, public entertainment was canceled and 1.3 billion people were asked to observe three minutes of silence as China began three days of mourning today for the victims of the nation’s massive earthquake.

Officials asked for the horns of cars, trains and ships and air raid sirens to sound as people fell silent at 2:28 p.m. – exactly one week after the quake splintered thousands of buildings and killed an estimated 50,000 people. Chinese news portal sina.com said the government had ordered all visitors to online entertainment and game pages redirected to Web sites dedicated to commemorating earthquake victims.

The Olympic torch relay – a potent symbol of national pride in the countdown to August’s much anticipated Beijing games – was also suspended during the mourning period.

Hope of finding more trapped survivors dwindled, and preventing hunger and disease among the homeless became a more pressing matter.

“It will soon be too late” to find trapped survivors, said Koji Fujiya, deputy leader of a Japanese rescue team working in Beichuan, a town reduced to rubble.

With more bodies discovered, the confirmed death toll rose to 32,476, the State Council, China’s cabinet, reported. The injured numbered more than 220,000.

The World Health Organization warned that shortages of clean water and warmer humid weather in Sichuan province – which bore the brunt of the earthquake – coulld spawn epidemics. It urged officials not to be distracted by the false belief that corpses were a health threat.

The threat of flooding by rivers blocked by landslides appeared to have eased after three waterways near the epicenter overflowed with no problems, Xinhua News Agency said.