Trail of destruction

At exactly 2:28 pm last Monday, the earth tore apart. Cracks ripped open a 300 km section of the Longmen Mountain earthquake belt in Sichuan province. For the next few minutes the ground shook violently, toppling schools and homes, destroying roads and bridges and uprooting the lives of millions.

A Tibetan boy, Mingyang Qixiang, 3, cries from hunger after being dug out from rubble in Yingxiu town. REUTERS

A woman collapses from grief after realizing her husband was not the survivor who has just been rescued from a building. This picture of devastation is taken in the old city district near Beichuan county. REUTERS

These schoolbags are all that remain from the collapsed classrooms of Hongbai Primary School in Hongbai town, Shifang city. Zhang Xiaoli

Prising apart the fingers, relatives wash the hand of a dead child in the quake's epicenter, Wenchuan county. Ren Junchuan

A broken road between Yingxiu town and Dujiangyan city. Zhou Chao

Surrounded by body bags, a grief-stricken mother breaks down at a collapsed high school in the township of Hanwang, in Mianzhu city north of Chengdu, Sichuan Province. Reuters

A man sits near the site of a collapsed school building in Wenchuan. REUTERS

A butterfly flies around the feet of dead children buried in the ruins of classrooms at a school in Beichuan county. REUTERS