Survivors found in mudslide

RESCUERS scrabbling through the aftermath of a huge three-day-old landslide discovered two people alive in the mud yesterday, as China’s cabinet announced a probe into the country’s latest industrial accident.

Almost 72 hours after being buried alive by a tide of earth and rubble, 19-year-old Tian Zeming was pulled from the soil by emergency workers who have been battling around the clock to find survivors.

Images from the scene showed dozens of firefighters and police thronging around a stretcher, apparently bearing the teenager to a waiting ambulance.

He was confirmed to be one of the 76 listed as officially missing after the disaster in Shenzhen, the Guangdong province fire department said on its official microblog.

He was taken to the Guangming New District Central Hospital, where he was said to be in a stable condition.

By mid-morning, another man found alive in the mud was still being removed, with reports that he had been gravely injured.

Meanwhile, the confirmed death toll ticked up to two, with a so-far unidentified body being recovered, the local website Shenzhen News said, showing a photo of rescue workers with heads bowed in a moment of silence.

The landslide is the latest in a series of fatal accidents in the world’s most populous country, and comes just months after a massive chemical blast in the industrial city of Tianjin killed almost 200 people.

Anger was growing over the lax standards and poor enforcement that were seen to be behind the disaster, whose final death toll was expected to be much higher.