Anxiety as Mexico mounts last-ditch search for quake survivors

Mexico City : Mexican rescuers worked through the night Saturday in a desperate last-ditch search for survivors of an earthquake that killed nearly 300 people, hoping to defy experts who say the chances of finding life in the rubble after 72 hours are bleak.

That 72-hour-mark beyond which hope is considered futile expired at 1:14 pm (1814 GMT) Friday -- the hour that the 7.1 earthquake struck on Tuesday.

Three days is the limit that experts say people trapped in rubble without water, often with crushed limbs, can hold on. Usually, the next phase is sending in bulldozers to clear away the debris and recover bodies.

But with Mexicans remembering "miracle" rescues a week following a worse quake in 1985 that killed 10,000 in the capital, and with anguished families refusing to cede to grief, President Enrique Pena Nieto promised officials would prolong their delicate probing for survivors.

"We have to keep up the rescue effort to keep finding survivors in the rubble," he said on a visit to neighboring Puebla state, also badly hit.

"No to machinery. Yes to hope," read one handwritten sign outside a toppled building in Mexico City.

The open-ended extension posed a dilemma for rescue workers in the ruins of a Mexico City clothing factory, just one of 39 collapsed buildings in the capital.

Continue, but until when?

"There are no indications of anyone inside but they're not sure enough to affirm there's really no one. The camera used doesn't allow a full view," explained Daniel Quiroz, a 22-year-old volunteer.