Race against time to locate living inhabitants buried under tons of mud and rocks when landslide hit the village rescue crews in Liangshui, Zhenxiong County of the province give them Yunnanwhere a total of 47 people were buried in 18 houses.

Meanwhile, a new 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit northwest China’s Xinjiang province yesterday and was felt in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that houses collapsed in communities near the epicenter of the earthquake. Currently, there is no information about dead, he clarifies.

Tragedy in the mud

The landslide in Liangshui unfolded in the early hours of yesterday Monday, at 05:51 (local time; yesterday Sunday at 23:51 Greek time) and has already claimed the lives of 11 people.

Authorities preemptively proceeded to hastily evacuate more than 200 other people.

Search and rescue teams continue to race against time to locate and retrieve missing persons as temperatures are below freezing, New China noted.

“Operations (…) are continuing throughout the night,” firefighter Li Shenglong told the agency, as the village was blanketed in snow.

They are operating somewhere on the spot 1,000 members of search and rescue teams with dozens of specially trained dogs and about 120 vehicles, according to New China.

At Yunnan, mountainous province, many members of ethnic minorities live. It is from poorer regions of China.

The disaster took place in a rural area surrounded by imposing snow-capped mountains. No official explanation has yet been given as to the causes.

Chinese state television CCTV broadcast footage showing rescue crews searching for survivors in the metal and concrete debris.

Residents of the wider area are also participating in the relief operation, the agency noted.

“Our village is not far away,” Hong Jie, 38, told New China. “We came mainly to distribute basic necessities, to prepare food, to distribute it to those in need,” he added.

The rock mass that flattened part of the village was “100 meters wide and 60 meters high, with a depth of about 6 meters,” explained Wu Junyao, director of the Natural Resources and Planning Department in Jiaotong, the city where Liangshui Village is administered. .

President Xi Jinping called on rescue workers on Monday to “do everything possible to limit the number of casualties”.

Landslides are common in mountainous areas of southwestern China, especially after heavy rainfall.