Torrential rain and powerful aftershocks on Tuesday hampered efforts to rescue victims of an earthquake in China's southwestern Sichuan Province as the death toll rose to nearly 12,000, although the figure is likely to soar as state media said nearly 19,000 were buried under rubble in one city alone. In quake-hit areas accessible by road from the Sichuan capital Chengdu, the official rescue effort was fast and on a massive scale as the government mobilised all its resources to unblock roads and search for survivors. State media said soldiers had reached Sichuan's mountainous Wenchuan County, epicentre of the earthquake on Monday afternoon, but that roads in the area were still blocked. The quake, which measured a revised 7.9 on the Richter scale according to the United States Geological Survey, was the most deadly suffered in China since 1976. In Dujiangyan a city between Wenchuan and the provincial capital, bodies dug from the rubble were left on the main street for relatives to claim. Workers at state-owned enterprises and local government officials joined rescuers from the army, medical services and police to sift through collapsed buildings for survivors. "Many buildings are destroyed and many people are dead," said Fan Xiuying, a survivor selling fruit next to the remains of her house. State media quoted the civil affairs ministry as putting the death toll from the earthquake at 11,921 people by late afternoon local time. However, information from areas close to the epicentre remained scarce and thousands of people were believed to be buried in destroyed buildings around nearby Mianzhu city, with more than 20,000 people yet to be reached by rescue workers. Senior leaders continued their high profile personal direction of relief efforts, with a meeting of the Communist party's supreme Politburo chaired by Hu Jintao, the president, saying it was the government's top priority. Wen Jiabao, the premier, visited Dujiangyan and ordered troops to stop at nothing to open roads to the worst-hit areas.