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Landslide buries 39, most feared dead
( 2002-08-13 14:52 ) (7 )

Seven people are dead and more than 30 missing after a massive landslide ploughed through a mountainous, rural region of southwest China on Monday night, local officials said on Tuesday.

A township official in Yanjin County in Yunnan province, some 550 km (340 miles) north of the Vietnamese border, said eight people had been injured, four seriously, in the sudden mudslide that hit one village and affected four others nearby.

"This is the first time we've had such a large mudslide, so it came as a shock. Also, the rain has never been so heavy," he said in Yunnan where torrential rains have not let up since August 8.

The Web site of the China News Service said six people had been dug out of the debris, two dead and four injured.

"Local villagers said four households and some road-repair workers and people fixing the rural electrical grid were among the 39 people buried under mud and rock," the agency said.

A Yanjin county official said the landslide was triggered by rain that had pounded the region for days and the village of Minzheng, home to more than 7,600 people, bore the brunt.

"It was because of torrential rain that lasted three days. The landslides in our area have continued," said the official, who declined to be identified.

Rescue teams slogged into the Minzheng area and the injured were taken to hospital, the China News Service said without giving further details.

COMMUNICATIONS CUT

Telephone communications, electricity and traffic were cut by the rains and mudslides in the remote area in a northeastern finger of the province where few tourists venture.

"It's raining hard and the roads are cut off, so it takes a long time for people to get to the affected areas," said the township official.

The only news filtering through was hand-delivered by people who had walked from village to village, he said.

An editor at Yunnan's provincial television station said the area was prone to landslides, but most were in lightly populated steep valleys or near rivers.

"It's rare to see one like this with so many casualties. This one has something to do with ecological degradation," he said from the provincial capital of Kunming.

The hills in the stricken area were once covered with lush vegetation, but had been stripped in recent years and geologists were on their way to help investigate the cause of the massive landslide, he said.

Deforestation was a major cause of the devastating floods in 1998 which prompted the government to ban logging in key areas and intensify a reafforestation programme.

In early June, an area in the northwestern province of Shaanxi was swamped by flash floods exacerbated by barren hills and more than 130 people were killed.

Heavy rains have killed about 900 people in China this year as the country grapples with its worst floods in four years. In 1998, in the most devastating summer flooding in decades, raging waters killed more than 4,000 people.