Beijing: A landslide in southeast China on Sunday buried about 35 workers at the construction site of a hydropower project, and rescuers later pulled out five people alive, officials and state-run media reported.
Rocks and mud with a volume of 100,000 cubic meters (3.5 million cubic feet) buried an office building and the workers' living area at the site in mountainous Taining county in Fujian province around 5 a.m. Sunday, according to a website run by the country's Communist Party's publicity department.
An initial count suggested 35 people were missing, the report said.
China's state broadcaster, CCTV, later reported that five workers were rescued alive, but said their conditions were unknown.
An official at the department said by phone that the cause of the landslide was still unclear, but that the area had seen rainfall in the past few days.
Heavy rain has affected much of southern China since Wednesday, triggering floods and landslides. The official Xinhua News Agency reported Saturday that rainstorms led to the evacuation of more than 1,000 people in Guangxi region, and collapsed a road that left one person dead and one missing.
The Taining county official, who only gave his surname of Wei, said firefighters and police were attempting to reach the buried, who were working on a hydropower project.
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