46 dead after landslide in southern China

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Chinese paramilitary policemen dug through a landslide to search for victims in the Zhaojiagou village in Zhenxiong county in southwest China's Yunnan province Friday. The landslide swept through the village in the steep, snow-dusted mountains of southern China on Friday, killing dozens of people, the local government said.

BEIJING » Authorities have pulled out the bodies of all 46 people, including 19 children, who were buried by a landslide that swept through a village in the steep, snow-dusted mountains of southern China, state media said today.

The landslide smothered 14 homes in Zhaojiagou village in Yunnan province on Friday, burying 46 people, the local county government of Zhenxiong said on its website.

The state-run China Central Television said today that all the bodies had been recovered.

The official Xinhua News Agency reported the identities of all of the victims, including 19 children and seven people who were more than 60 years old.

The Zhenxiong government said in a statement that the mudslide was caused by soil that had become heavily saturated from continuous rain and snow over the past month.

There were other factors, including the slope's steepness, its poor soil composition and the impact from an earthquake, the government said.

The statement denied any direct relation between the disaster and mining activities in the area and concluded that the mudslide was a natural disaster.

Photos posted on the website of the Yunnan Daily, the official newspaper of the provincial government, showed rescuers in orange jumpsuits using construction machinery to sift through massive piles of mud and earth. Behind them stood hillsides and pine trees covered in snow, signs of the unusually cold winter that has hit all of China.

Mudslides occur periodically in the region, which is prone to earthquakes and heavy rains. In a nearby county, 81 people died in an earthquake in September. A month later, a landslide buried a primary school, killing 18 students and one other person.