Landslide kills quake survivors

Published on 06/10/2012 00:00

All 18 elementary school students buried in a landslide were confirmed dead yesterday, while one other person died after a hillside collapsed and smothered part of a village in mountainous southwestern China.

The Tiantou Elementary School was buried on Thursday when the hillside collapsed in Zhenhe, a village in Yunnan province, Yiliang County government said .

All 18 students who were buried in the school were confirmed dead and the official Xinhua News Agency said the body of a 19th victim was found yesterday. It gave no details, but the county government said earlier that a person was missing from a house that had collapsed.

The landslide dammed a river, causing its water to pool 15 metres across and seven metres deep around the buried area, hampering rescue efforts and forcing the evacuation of 800 people, the government said.

While officials have yet to give a cause for the landslide, that part of Yunnan province has been lashed by rain and is prone to earthquakes. A series of quakes last month left 81 people dead and devastated parts of
Yiliang county.

Thursday was a holiday in China, but the students who were killed had been attending school to make up for days missed after the quake, Yiliang officials said.