Many missing in landslide

Rescuers search for survivors at the landslide site in the Jiwei Mountain area of Wulong county, Chongqing municipality on Saturday. -- PHOTO: REUTERS

BEIJING - HUNDREDS of rescue workers and volunteers were on Saturday searching for dozens of people feared buried alive when part of a mountain collapsed in south-west China, officials said.

Seventy-four people were still missing after the disaster struck on Friday afternoon in the mining country of Wulong, Chongqing municipality, a spokesman for the municipality government said.

China Central Television reported that 19 miners and seven staff members of a mobile phone company were killed. Rescuers have pulled out eight people from the debris, three of whom were seriously injured.

Vice-Premier Zhang Dejiang arrived at the site early on Saturday to supervise the rescue effort and comfort relatives of the victims, television images showed.

About 3.5 million tonnes of mud and rock from the Jiwei Mountain area had crashed hundreds of metres down into the valley, burying houses and an iron ore mine where 47 miners were at work, official media said. The debris covered an area of 600m by 300m and was at least 40m deep.

Around 500 rescue workers were dispatched from neighbouring districts to help 400 firefighters, police and medical staff, according to the local communications department.

However, rescue work had to be halted at times because boulders as large as 15m in diameter were hurtling down, China News Service quoted a soldier as saying.

The authorities were also concerned about the threat of flooding in the region after the landslide blocked the Wujiang, a tributary of the Yangtze. An investigation has begun into the cause of the disaster, which cut power lines and communications in several areas.

Densely populated Chongqing is rich in iron ore, natural gas and other mineral resources, and industrial accidents are common.

Similar landslides have been reported around China. Last year, at least 277 people were killed when a shoddy holding reservoir burst and a three-storey wave of mud and iron-mining waste inundated a valley in northern Shanxi province.

AFP, Xinhua