Pallade Veneta - Fears and hopes at collapsed Mandalay school

"Is there anybody inside?" they shouted.

Dozens of people gathered outside hushed, straining to hear a cry, a voice, a whisper. But there were no sounds.

The six-storey building was reduced to one and a half by Friday’s earthquake, the lower floors pancaked into a tilted-over mass of concrete.

Strands of steel rebar emerged from the broken shell of its top floor, twisted into the shape of tangled tree roots by the force of the 7.7-magnitude tremor.

A giant teddy bear in a pink T-shirt lay face down in the rubble.

At least seven people were trapped inside, locals said, including two teachers and several children. Seven others had died while two were extracted alive in the hours after the quake struck.

Scores of family members and neighbours sat huddled on the ground, watching quietly, hoping for more good news.

Yin Nu, whose 26-year-old daughter Yamin Shwe Zin was one of the teachers trapped inside, sat to one side. She had arrived on the evening of the quake.

At one point, rescuers heard her call from inside: "I am teacher Yamin. I am alive inside. Please help me. I am thirsty."

Her mother has been waiting ever since.

"I couldn't sleep all night. I was saying if you're gone, at least show me your hand," she told AFP tearfully.

"I was around the building like a crazy person. I could only call out my daughter's name and cry because I couldn't do anything."

- 'Hard for me to accept' -

The school in Paleik, on the outskirts of Myanmar's second-largest city, normally has around 200 pupils aged 12 to 15, but the term has finished and most had left.

All of those in one of its two buildings escaped. But others were having a dance practice for the upcoming Water Festival, the traditional Myanmar new year, in a fifth-floor classroom when the quake struck and brought the structure down.

Myanmar is regularly hit by calamities, on top of the civil war that has raged since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government.

"I ran away from the building," said teacher Kim Ma Zin, 35, who suffered a cut to her forehead.

"It's a natural disaster," she added. "We can face this every year".

Rescuers used pneumatic drills to break up concrete blocks to remove them, and a mechanical digger demolished a toilet block to make room for another vehicle to approach.

There was little talk among the huddled watchers, and Yin Nu struggled to cling to hope that her English graduate daughter -- one of her four children -- had survived.

"My son told me that it seems like his sister is not going to make it," she said.

"It's hard for me to accept it -- she's my daughter."

She could feel her presence, she said, clasping her hands and insisting her child would not leave her.

"She is a very considerate daughter. Every time she goes to the temple or visits the pagoda, she always prays that she can be the daughter that can look after her parents."

U.Paccione--PV