China quake kills nearly 10,000 in Sichuan

"We are in urgent need of tents, food, medicine and satellite communications equipment," the Communist Party chief of Wenchuan, Wang Bin said, according to Xinhua.

Most farmers' homes in two townships had collapsed and there was no word from the three townships nearest the epicenter, which have a population of 24,000, the report added. So far Wenchuan has reported 15 dead, a number likely to rise steeply.

More than 7,000 may have died in Sichuan's Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, where 80 percent of the buildings were destroyed, Sichuan television said. Beichuan has a population of 161,000, meaning about one in 10 there were killed or injured.

"Even if it means walking in, we must enter the worst-hit areas as quickly as possible," Wen said, according to Xinhua.

But a paramilitary officer marching with a hundred troops towards Wenchuan described a devastated landscape that is likely to yield many dead and to frustrate rescuers.

"I have seen many collapsed civilian houses and the rocks dropped from mountains on the roadside are everywhere," said the People's Armed Police officer Liu Zaiyuan, according to Xinhua.

(Writing by Chris Buckley; Editing by John Chalmers)