(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-05-23 00:12

CHONGQING  -- A 31-year-old man who was rescued after being trapped 179 hours under quake rubble has been recovering, hospital sources said on Thursday.

The survivor, Ma Yuanjiang, who was a power plant executive in Yingxiu township, Sichuan Province, now can drink nearly 800 milliliters of rice water in addition to special nutritional liquids, according to Wang Weidong, president of Xinqiao Hospital in Chongqing Municipality.

Wang said Ma had talked more with medical staff, indicating that the man was also recovering from the psychological trauma caused by the 8.0-magnitude earthquake that hit Sichuan on May 12.

Ma's left forearm was amputated early on Wednesday at the hospital.

But Ma was still weak and needed special care, Wang said.

Ma was freed from the wreckage of a plant building at about 1 a.m. on Tuesday.

Rescuers on Wednesday extricated a woman who had been trapped in a tunnel in a hydropower plant construction site in Sifang City of Sichuan for nine days. The 35-year-old was the last reported case of a survivor being rescued; no further news of rescues was reported on Thursday.

The death toll in the destructive quake reached 51,151 as of 10:00 a.m. Thursday, with 288,431 people injured and 29,328 missing, according to the Information Office of the State Council.