Parents wait for answers on construction of school in China earthquake zone

Upset parents of children killed when a primary school collapsed during China's massive earthquake last month staged a sit-in Friday while waiting for results of an investigation into the school's construction.

The parents said local officials had promised to give them the details on how the school was built and why it crumbled so easily in the May 12 quake, which killed more than 69,000 people in Sichuan province in China's worst disaster in three decades.

"They said they would give us answers on June 20," said Huan Zaojun, one of about 150 parents gathered at the Fuxing No. 2 Primary School in the town of Wufu, 45 miles (75 kilometers) north of the provincial capital Chengdu. Huan's 11-year-old son died in the earthquake.

After a standoff that lasted at least three hours, the parents went on buses to a bigger town nearby to meet government officials. Details of the meeting were initially unavailable.

In the afternoon, at least two foreign journalists, including an Associated Press reporter who spoke to parents at the school, were detained by police.

A Sichuan foreign affairs department official confirmed the detentions, saying the reporters had broken the law.

"The reporters were working behind police cordons. They had already been notified in English and Chinese that they were not supposed to be there, but they remained there. So the police forcibly removed them," said Yuan Hongling.

"They are safe," she said.

Accusations of shoddy school construction has become a major flash point for anger against the government, which has been praised for its reaction to the earthquake.

The parents sat in the shade and initially ignored pleas from local leader Zhang Qing to get on the buses.

Parents have protested at numerous schools in the province, calling for explanations as to why schools collapsed so easily while nearby buildings were still standing after the 7.9 magnitude quake.

Huan and other parents were standing near a memorial that contained pictures of their children.

The parents were sensitive to official pressure and pushed a television crew out of the area that did not have media passes because they thought the crew was from the government.

The scene at the school was tense but calm. "I don't feel so good waiting so long," said another parent, Pi Kaijian, after waiting several hours without any word.

Sichuan was also braced Friday for heavy rainstorms that may trigger new landslides, with thunderstorms forecast for Friday through Sunday, according to the provincial weather bureau. This month marks the start of the annual rainy season, which routinely leads to flooding in rivers in provinces downstream.

Landslides are a particular concern because the May 12 earthquake caused steep hillsides to shear away and crash into river valleys below. Many slopes remain unstable and are at high risk of being washed away.

Authorities have evacuated more than 110,000 people since Sunday from mountain districts near the quake's epicenter, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The government has already ordered many survivors to move several times because of potential danger from damaged homes, aftershocks and possible flooding from "quake lakes" that formed when huge piles of debris blocked rivers.

Torrential rains have swept much of southern China in the past week, killing at least 63 people, swamping millions of acres of farmland and causing billions of dollars in damage. Low-lying parts of eastern Sichuan have been affected, but there have been no reports of flooding in the quake zone.

This week's heavy rains have submerged farms in the south, but the swollen rivers largely spared the tens of thousands of factories in the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province _ a huge producer of computers, shoes, toys and other products for the global market.