A landslide yesterday buried 47 people in a remote village in mountainous southwestern China, state media said.
Hours later, two survivors were rescued amid freezing temperatures and falling snow.
The disaster struck just before 6am in the village of Liangshui in the northeastern part of Yunnan Province. By evening, nine bodies were retrieved and about 500 people were evacuated from the area.
Photo: AP / Xinhua News Agency
Rescue crews continued to search for people who were buried in about 18 homes, the Zhenxiong County publicity department said.
Reports said eight of the bodies were from the group that was initially buried by the landslide, but did not say where the ninth body was found.
The cause of the landslide was not immediately known, as survivors and rescuers struggled with snow, icy roads and freezing temperatures that were forecast to persist for at least the next three days.
Luo Dongmei, 35, was sleeping when the landslide struck, but she survived and was relocated to a school building by local authorities.
“I was asleep, but my brother knocked on the door and woke me up. They said there was a landslide and the bed was shaking, so they rushed upstairs and woke us up,” Luo said.
Luo, her husband and their three children, along with many other residents, have been provided with food at the school, but are still waiting for blankets and other protection from the cold weather, she said.
Luo said she has been unable to contact her sister and aunt, who lived closer to the site of the landslide.
“The only thing I can do is to wait,” she said.
State broadcaster China Central Television put the death toll at nine by 6pm, about 12 hours after the disaster struck. Zhengxiong County lies about 2,250km southwest of Beijing, with altitudes ranging as high as 2,400m.
Heavy snow has struck many parts of China, causing transportation chaos and endangering lives.
Last week, rescuers evacuated tourists from a remote skiing area in northwestern China where dozens of avalanches triggered by heavy snow had trapped more than 1,000 people for a week. The avalanches blocked roads, stranding tourists and residents in a village in Altay Prefecture in the Xinjiang region, close to China’s border with Mongolia, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Landslides, often caused by rain or unsafe construction work, are not uncommon in China. At least 70 people were killed in landslides last year, including more than 50 at an open pit mine in China’s Inner Mongolia region.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS