Rescue operation launched in Sichuan province after more than 60 homes in Xinmo village were engulfed by avalanche of rock

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

More than 100 people were feared dead after a landslide buried more than 100 villagers in south-west China’s Sichuan province.

Chinese state media said more than 60 homes were covered in rock and mud in Xinmo, a remote village in north Sichuan.



The debris slid half a mile down a steep slope to block a stretch of river and of road, according to Xinhua. A rescue effort was launched involving more than 1,000 workers.



Xinhua, quoting rescue headquarters, said 15 bodies were retrieved on Saturday, with 120 more people believed to have been buried.



The state broadcaster, CCTV, reported three people were pulled alive from the rubble: a couple and their two-month-old baby. Another child from the same family remained buried.



Photos from the official People’s Daily showed rescuers working into the night using using torches and trying to hear anyone trapped beneath the rubble. Water thick with mud flowed over the site, submerging a car pushed from the road, while police and residents pulled on ropes to try to dislodge large boulders.

Police closed roads in the county to all traffic except emergency services, the news agency said.



Wang Yongbo, a local rescue official, told CCTV an estimated 3m cubic metres (105m cubic feet) of earth and rock had come down.

There is an extensive network of dams in the area, which is close to the region of Tibet, including two hydropower plants in Diexi town near the buried village. Heavy rain caused the landslide, the provincial department of land and resources said, according to Xinhua.



The area is prone to earthquakes, including one in 1933 that resulted in parts of Diexi town becoming submerged by a nearby lake, and an 8.0 magnitude quake in central Sichuan’s Wenchuan county in 2008 that killed nearly 70,000 people.