The death toll from the Yunnan earthquake jumped to nearly 600 yesterday, authorities said.
 

Despite the spike, some slivers of hope remained, among them the rescue of two women, one aged 80.
 

Rescue efforts in the southwestern province, where the magnitude 6.5 quake struck on Sunday afternoon, were heavily hampered by traffic delays and landslides blocking roads.
 

At least 589 people had been confirmed killed as of yesterday morning, with another nine missing, the civil affairs ministry said on its website.
 

Officials attribute the sharp rise in reported casualties to the inaccessibility and remoteness of villages. Most of the latest casualties were reported in Ludian and Qiaojia counties. Nine people were still listed as missing in Qiaojia.
 

The ministry said 2,401 people had been injured and 230,000 evacuated, while more than 80,000 homes had fully or partially collapsed.
 

In a tale of good news, 80-year-old Ding Changmei was pulled out of debris yesterday afternoon in Yinping Village, about 30 kilometers from the epicenter township of Longtoushan.
 

Her five family members were all injured and unable to rescue her from the rubble of their mud house.
 

Doctors said she is safe.
 

In a separate incident in Yinping, a 50-year-old woman was pulled out alive from the debris 67 hours after the quake.
 

Residents said school dormitories collapsed in the disaster, echoing the 2008 Sichuan quake in which more than 80,000 people, thousands of them children who died when their schools crumbled.
 

More than 18,000 professional rescuers are now in the disaster zone, most of them military and police.
 

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