CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND - New Zealand observed two minutes of silence Tuesday to mourn as many as 240 people killed when an earthquake struck Christchurch exactly a week earlier.
Recovery crews still picking through the rubble were among those who stopped work and bowed their heads at 12:51 p.m., along with millions of other people across the country.
The magnitude-6.3 quake was centered a few miles from downtown Christchurch when the city of 350,000 on New Zealand's South Island was bustling with workers, shoppers and tourists. It brought down or badly damaged office towers, churches and thousands of homes across the city in one of New Zealand's worst disasters.
As an international team of urban disaster specialists continued to pick through the wreckage Tuesday, police again raised the official death toll, saying the number of bodies pulled from the rubble had reached 154.
Police Superintendent Dave Cliff said a total around 240 was expected.
On Monday, a baby boy who was the quake's youngest known victim was buried by relatives who clutched stuffed toys and draped his tiny coffin in a comforter.
Baxtor Gowland, 5 months old, was sleeping at home when he was fatally injured by masonry shaken loose by the quake, the family said.
Authorities have named just eight victims of the disaster -- Gowland and another infant among them -- and say they are struggling to identify many of the other bodies pulled from the rubble because of the extent of their injuries.
