Nineteen children among 46 dead in China landslide

BEIJING: A desperate search for three people missing in a landslide in southwestern China ended on Saturday when their bodies were pulled from the mud, taking the final death toll to 46 -- many of them children.

Authorities in Yunnan province said that the last three bodies were recovered on Saturday morning after a night of frantic efforts by more than 1,000 rescue workers to locate the final missing residents of the remote village of Gaopo.

Xinhua said those buried included 27 adults and 19 children.

Two other people were hospitalised after the landslide struck on Friday morning, engulfing 16 homes, bringing a thunderous crash and throwing up thick clouds of dust, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Rescuers toiled into the night, braving bitter wind and freezing temperatures, using lamps and specialised detection devices in the hope of locating the missing, Xinhua said.

Soldiers, police, firefighters and mine rescue workers joined the search operation, using 20 excavators and trucks, it added.

Li Yongju, 50, said she heard the crash of the landslide while cleaning her yard and rushed with other villagers to the disaster site with shovels and hoes.

"We pulled out several people, one of whom was breathing weakly. But after a while, he died," Xinhua quoted Li as saying.

Zhou Benju, wept as she recounted hearing the rumble of the landslide.

"Several relatives of my parents -- my grandma, brother, uncle and my aunt's family members, died," she told the agency.

Hundreds of thousands of messages of support had been posted on microblogging site Sina Weibo.

"Pray for those who remain missing in the debris. Life is too fragile. We only wish miracles can happen!" read one post.

"It is a tragedy, a real tragedy!" wrote another on Sohu.com.

Photos on Yunnan Web, run by the Yunnan provincial government, showed rescuers in orange uniforms digging into wide swathes of mud against a backdrop of snow-covered, terraced hills.

A video posted on a Chinese social networking site appeared to show a group of villagers digging through thick mud and debris to uncover a body, which was carried away on a stretcher.

Xinhua said that the landslide had been triggered by 10 days of non-stop rain and snow, according to initial geologists' reports.

The area has experienced unusually low temperatures in recent weeks during what authorities have called China's coldest winter in 28 years.

The landslide spread over an area 120 metres (yards) long, 110 metres wide and 16 metres deep, according to authorities.