Three pulled alive from rubble five days after quake

RESCUERS pulled three people alive from the rubble yesterday, five days after an earthquake killed nearly 2,000 people in a Tibetan region of western China.

China Central Television said a four-year-old girl and an elderly woman had been trapped since Wednesday under a bed in a collapsed mud house in a village about 13 miles from the hardest-hit town of Jiegu, until rescuers dug them out. Relatives kept Wujian Cuomao, 68, and Cairen Baji alive by sending them food and water through gaps in the rubble with the help of bamboo poles, state broadcaster CCTV said. The woman's life was not in danger, while the child was uninjured.

Rescuers also freed a Tibetan woman from her collapsed house.