Wall Street ended mixed Thursday after steep loss on credit crisis.

The New York Fed, which injected 5 billion dollars to markets on Wednesday, said it would step in with a 14-day repurchase agreement worth 12 billion dollars.

However, investor were worried about the uncertainty of the current credit crunch as Countrywide, the U.S. largest mortgage lender said early Thursday it was forced to draw on an 11.5 billion dollars credit line to fund operations.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 343 points in the early afternoon session amid heavy sell-off by panic investors.

On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported that construction of new homes and apartments dropped 6.1 percent in July to 1.38 million units. That was down 20.9 percent from a year ago and the slowest pace since January 1997.

The Labor Department said that the number of newly laid off workers filing for unemployment benefits rose by 6,000 last week to 322,000, an unexpected increase for markets.

The markets were lifted in the last half hour of the day by financial shares as well as the fundamental buyers' coming back into the market.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 15.69 at 12,845.78. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index was up 4.56 points at 1,411.26. The Nasdaq Composite Index was down 7.76 points at 2,451.07.