It has been 24 hours since the 7.1 magnitude earthquake that ravaged the Yushu Autonomous Prefecture in Northwest China's Qinghai Province. Rescue work continues following the collapse of most of the buildings in the region. At Yushu Number Three Primary School, 23 of 59 pupils trapped under the debris have been rescued.

The student dorm at the Primary School was totally destroyed by the quake. The building caught fire after the collapse.

A local group of rescuers rushed to the site to search for trapped students. They used their hands to dig through the rubble as they lacked proper tools.

By the afternoon, a second rescue team arrived with sniffer dogs and a fork-lift truck, helping to locate the buried students and clear away the debris.

The rescuers shouted through the rubble, searching for signs of life and encouraging the students to hold on. Six hours later, 23 students had been successfully rescued.

Meanwhile at the site of a destroyed 3-storey building, fire fighters ran into more problems. After extinguishing the blaze, high-temperature water vapor seeping out from the debris, made access to the buried victims even more difficult.

By around midnight, a girl who had been trapped for 16 hours under the building was successfully rescued and rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment. She is now in stable condition.