Dozens missing after landslide

Rescuers recovered 10 bodies and were still searching for 93 missing people on Sunday, a day after a massive landslide buried a picturesque mountain village in southwestern China.

More than 2,500 rescuers with detection devices and dogs were looking for signs of life amid the rubble of huge boulders that rained down on Xinmo village in Sichuan province early Saturday.

As of Sunday night, only three people — a couple and their month-old baby — had been rescued from the disaster site.

Sitting on the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau in Aba prefecture’s Mao County, Xinmo has in recent years become a tourism destination for its picturesque scenery of homes in lush meadows tucked between steep and rugged mountains. But after the landslide, the village was reduced to a vast area of rubble.

As heavy machines removed debris and men scoured the rubble for survivors on Sunday, relatives from nearby villages sobbed as they awaited news of their loved ones.

“It was as if strong winds were blowing by, or a big truck rumbled by,” Tang Hua, a 38year-old woman from a nearby village, told The Associated Press. “The houses were shaking, as if there were an earthquake. We rushed out and saw massive smoke. With a thundering sound, the smoke suddenly lifted. We realized it was a landslide.”

“As we ran for safety, we looked this way and saw the village flattened,” she said.

Tang has relatives in Xinmo, but she said little could be done at this point. “The whole village is done for,” she said.

The landslide carried an estimated 18 million cubic metres of earth and rock — equivalent to more than 7,200 Olympic-sized swimming pools — when it slid down from steep mountains. Some of it fell from as high as 1.6 kilometres.

It buried 1.6 kilometres of road and blocked a two-kilometre section of a river as it completely wiped away the village, which was once home to 46 families comprising more than 100 people.

The Sichuan provincial government said Sunday that 10 bodies had been found, lowering an earlier figure of 15 that had been reported by state media. It also lowered the number of missing to 93, saying 15 people on an initial list of the missing were accounted for.