Along with three minutes of silence to be observed nationwide, flags will fly at half-mast for three days in China and at its diplomatic missions abroad, the government announced yesterday.

The Olympic torch relay will also be suspended during this period as a mark of respect for the estimated 50,000 who died in the quake.

In the disaster zones, efforts began to shift yesterday from searching for buried survivors to clearing corpses from shattered buildings as the government raised the confirmed death toll to 32,476.

For many refugees in devastated Beichuan county, the closure that comes from knowing what became of family members has started to replace fast-dimming hopes of a happy reunion.

For 35-year-old farmer Zhu Fuhui, all she wants is a body - that of her missing son.

She had trekked back to the mountainous region, undeterred by threats of flooding, to catch a last glimpse of her 14-year-old child even if it meant the pain of seeing his mangled remains.

'I just want to see my baby one last time,' she said, tears welling up as she surveyed what used to be his school.

Beichuan Middle School had pretty much collapsed into a pile of rubble. The school sign and a basketball hoop were all that remained.

About 1,000 teachers and students were in the building when the quake brought it crashing down.

Across Sichuan province yesterday, only three survivors - one in Beichuan - were dug out.

More often than not, rescue teams, including the Singapore Civil Defence Force's Disaster Assistance and Rescue Team, pulled out rotting bodies.

A soldier from Chongqing told The Straits Times that the men in his platoon at Beichuan carried out 22 bodies yesterday morning.

The troops moved the remains in bodybags to a makeshift pit, ferrying them on lorries, forklifts and, sometimes, even wheelbarrows.

Even as the grim task of burial picked up momentum, a magnitude 6 aftershock shook up some of the worst-hit parts of Sichuan yesterday morning, killing at least three people in the town of Jiangyou and adding to the trauma of survivors.

The authorities, worried by the hundreds of aftershocks and the build-up of water in blocked rivers, are trying to stop people from returning to the affected areas.

The Xinhua news agency said that the most dangerous mass of water was only about 3km upstream from Beichuan, where rescue workers brought out a survivor yesterday from under the remains of a hospital.

But for carpenter Li Jinghua, 45, who had been trudging for four days from neighbouring Qinghai province to reach Beichuan's county seat - 130km from the epicentre - all that mattered was that he reach his Dongxin township.

'I left home to work in Qinghai just last weekend. But I had to turn back the moment I heard about the quake,' he said.

'I have not heard anything from my wife and my grandson.

'Our town is not featured on TV or radio. I have no idea what happened.'

shpeh@sph.com.sg

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION FROM AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS, ASSOCIATED PRESS