15 dead, 120 missing in China after landslide
Beijing, June 24: More than 120 people were buried by a landslide that caused huge rocks and a mass of earth to come crashing into their homes in a mountain village in south-western China early Saturday, officials said.
Government officials said that 15 bodies were pulled from the rubble.
The landslide, which came from a mountain, engulfed a cluster of 62 homes and a hotel in the village of Xinmo in Mao County at about 6 am, the Sichuan provincial government said. Officials said 1.6 kilometres of road was buried in the disaster.
“It’s the biggest landslide to hit this area since the Wenchuan earthquake,” Wang Yongbo, an official leading one of the rescue efforts, told state media.
Mao County sits on the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau and is home to 110,000 people.
Beijing, June 24: Rescuers pulled 15 bodies from an avalanche of rocks that buried a mountain village in southwest China on Saturday as an increasingly bleak search for some 100 people carried into the night.
Only three survivors, a couple and their onemonth-old baby, have been found so far after 62 homes in Xinmo village vanished under a mass of mud and rocks in Sichuan province. Heavy rain caused the side of the mountain to collapse onto the riverside village in the early morning, according to authorities.
Qiao Dashi, the baby’s father, said he had woken up after 5.00 am to change his crying son’s diaper when he “heard a big noise coming from the back”. “The house shook,” he told state broadcaster CCTV from his hospital bed. “Rocks were in the living room. My wife and I climbed over, took the baby, and got out.”
“I have superficial injuries. Overall, I’m okay. But psychologically, it’s hard. The entire village, with dozens of families, was flattened,” he said, with a bandage around his head. The rescue operation’s headquarters reported that 15 people had been found dead by the late evening, according to the official Xinhua news agency. The government said earlier that six people died and 112 people were missing.