Neighbouring areas have also suffered, with more than 50,000 made homeless in one county of Gansu province to the north, Xinhua said.
But there were still small victories.
Rescuers saved a child from the debris of a school in Beichuan 80 hours after the quake struck. They said they could hear weak calls for help from amid the rubble, Xinhua said.
Three others in Beichuan were rescued on Friday, two in the remains of an office building and one in a collapsed hospital.
And 483 children and teachers escaped unscathed from a wrecked school in Beichuan.
Many raised questions about school construction.
In Dujiangyan, a school collapse buried 900 students. In Wufu, nearly every building in the village withstood the quake but for a primary school, whose collapse killed about 300.
"Our child wasn't killed by the earthquake. She and the others were killed by a derelict building. The officials knew it was unsafe," said Bi Kaiwei, whose daughter, 13, was killed.
Two girls held hands in the ruins of their school promising not to give up hope. "When rescuers found them, one in a coma and the other dead, their hands were still clenched together," Xinhua said.
Housing Minister Jiang Weixin said the schools weren't designed to withstand such a powerful earthquake, but added corruption was a possible cause.
"At this stage we cannot rule out the possibility that there has been shoddy work and inferior materials," Jiang told a news conference in Beijing.
DAM THREAT
There were also concerns about epidemics if the dead were not soon buried or cremated.
"We are in urgent need of body bags," Bai Licheng, a Communist Party official in Sichuan's Yingxiu town, told Xinhua.
Bodies were lined up along the riverbank in the town, where more than 3,000 soldiers were searching for survivors.
The Ministry of Health issued a notice ordering bodies to be cleaned where they were found and buried as soon as possible, far from water sources and downwind from populated areas.
Hundreds of damaged dams have also raised fears of collapse or flooding that could inundate towns and cities that are already struggling to recover from the quake.
China has asked the United States for satellite images to help locate victims and identify damaged infrastructure.
In Sichuan and neighbouring Chongqing, reservoirs have been damaged, some dams have cracked or are leaking water, and officials have warned the full extent of the hazard was as yet unclear.
