Landslide kills 27 in south-west China as floods continue

Jul 20, 2007, 4:31 GMT

Beijing - A landslide caused by torrential rain killed at least 27 people in south-western China's Yunnan province, as floods continued to to plague many regions, the government said on Friday.

The landslide buried 34 people inside a workshop in Yunnan's Tengchong county on Thursday, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Rescuers found five survivors and recovered 27 bodies, leaving two people still missing, the agency said.

In the eastern province of Shandong, the death toll from floods had risen to at least 32 people, with 10 still missing, the Ministry of Civil Affairs said.

About 180 millimetres of rain was recorded in just three hours on Wednesday evening in the provincial capital, Jinan, forcing the evacuation of 292,000 people in Shandong, the ministry said.

The death toll in the adjoining south-western regions of Chongqing and Sichuan had also risen to 49 by Friday after the worst rainstorms for more than 115 years, it said.

Torrential rain and serious flooding have also affected wide areas of central, southern and eastern China in the last two weeks.

Summer floods and landslides have killed more than 600 people in China so far this summer, according to state media and civil affairs ministry reports.