Digging and DNA samples all in a day's work in Beichuan

The smell of death hangs heavy over the once idyllic town of Beichuan , but rescue workers say they will not give up the search for survivors for another week.

Although the scale of the rescue effort was scaled down yesterday, teams of workers with special life-seeking equipment and sniffer dogs continued to search methodically through the rubble for signs of life.

In the morning a woman was miraculously pulled out alive, 164 hours after the earthquake struck, and a team of Guizhou firemen spent the day with shovels, pick-axes and drills, attempting to dig out a man found alive by imaging equipment.

But with temperatures soaring above 30 degrees Celsius, the chances of finding further survivors are minimal.

'If there is only a 1 per cent chance of finding someone alive, we will give 100 per cent - but today is our final hope,' said Deng Shengqun, a People's Liberation Army officer from Kunming , who was helping to direct the digging.

Behind him, soldiers dressed in dark-green rubber suits hauled two bodies over a 10-metre-high pile of bricks, broken concrete and twisted metal - an adult and a small child.

The nylon bags were placed by the side of the road next to piles of lime used to disinfect decaying corpses.