Time is running out for finding victims alive from the earthquake that China says is its worst natural disaster since the formation of the communist state in 1949.

The Chinese army will airlift another one thousand two hundred tons of materials and send ten more medical teams to the country's quake-hit southwest.

And now the government has for the first time allowed in foreign rescue teams with specialist knowledge and equipment.

Peter Cave reports.

"Rescue teams from Russia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore are now working alongside the Chinese Army using trained dogs, endoscopic cameras, electronic life detectors and powerful but precise hydraulic cutting and parting tolls to search for survivors.The official death toll has now neared 23-thousand and officials say 14-thousand are buried under the rubble. 170-thousand have been seriously injured and almost five million people are homeless."

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