Chinese troops evacuated 18 scientists with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) trapped in a forest in Mianzhu, a quake-hit area in southwest China's Sichuan province and escorted them to a safe place.

The experts, among dozens of their colleagues from the CAS Chengdu Institute of Biology, were doing scientific expedition in the mountain forest, one kilometer away from Qingping Township in Mianzhu when the earthquake took place.

Soldiers from the Chengdu Military Area Command of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) came to their rescue on Friday and helped them to get back to Qingping Township after more than 30 hours of hiking.

By early Saturday morning, PLA soldiers evacuated more than 2,000 residents and 300 injured people from the townships of Jinhua, Qingping and Tianchi, all of which are perched in the Longmen Mountain, to safe places.

China has mobilized more than 130,000 troops for rescue operations. Foreign rescue teams from Japan, Russia, the Republic of Korea and Singapore have arrived in Sichuan to aid the disaster relief efforts.

(Xinhua News Agency May 17, 2008)