Beijing: The Beijing Olympic torch relay will resume its journey on Thursday after a three-day halt to mark a national period of mourning for China's earthquake victims, state media reported.

The relay will restart where it left off on Sunday - in the port city of Ningbo in eastern Zhejiang province - without missing any stops, Xinhua news agency said.

It was unclear how organisers planned to make up the three-day suspension and whether the torch was still scheduled to arrive in Beijing on August 6,two days before the Olympics are to start.

Officials at the Beijing Olympic organising committee were not immediately available for comment.

China declared a three-day mourning period from yesterday to tomorrow banning all public entertainment, including the torch relay, after the March 12 quake, which killed more than 40,000 people, according to the government.

The torch relay is the most ambitious in Olympic history and included a one-month world tour in April that was seriously disrupted by groups trying to highlight grievances against China's communist rulers.

Pro-Tibet activists demonstrated in London, Paris and San Francisco to protest against China's crackdown on unrest in the Himalayan region, which broke out in mid-March and spread to neighbouring regions.

The flame returned to China earlier this month for a three-month national journey that was just over a week old when the earthquake struck.

Source : PTI