KUNMING, Jan. 23 (Xinhua) — The death toll from a landslide that struck a mountainous village in southwest China’s Yunnan Province on Monday has climbed to 11, local authorities said on early Tuesday morning.
The landslide occurred in Liangshui Village in the city of Zhaotong at about 6 a.m. on Monday, with 47 people reported missing. As of 10 p.m. Monday, 11 people were found dead, according to the local disaster relief headquarters.
More than 1,000 rescue workers are carrying out search and rescue work at the site.
Preliminary investigation by an expert group determined that the disaster resulted from a collapse in the steep cliff area atop the slope, said Wu Junyao, director of the natural resources and planning bureau of Zhaotong.
The collapsed mass measured approximately 100 meters in width, 60 meters in height, with an average thickness of around 6 meters, he said.
At the same time Xinhua News Agency reported that a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck a remote part of China’s western Xinjiang region early Tuesday.
Xinhua cited the China Earthquake Networks Center as saying the quake rocked Wushu county in Aksu prefecture shortly after 2 a.m. local time.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake occurred in the Tian Shan mountain range, “a seismically active region, though earthquakes of this size occur somewhat infrequently.” It said the largest quake in the area in the past century was a 7.1-magnitude one in 1978 about 200 kilometers to the north of one early Tuesday.
Tremors were felt as far away as the neighboring countries Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. In the Kazakh capital of Almaty, people left their homes, the Russian news agency Tass reported.
A local police station received a phone call at about 3:10 a.m. and was told that a child was buried. They rushed to save the child, who is now receiving medical treatment in a local hospital in stable condition. The mother of the child had scratches on her face.
As of 4 a.m. Tuesday, the region had recorded 14 aftershocks with a magnitude of three or higher, with the strongest registering at 5.3 magnitude.
The railway authorities promptly initiated an emergency response following the earthquake, halting passenger trains and checking railway tracks, bridges, signal equipment and other facilities in the affected areas. Services for 27 trains had been affected.
Parts of the area had experienced temporary disruption of electricity supply shortly after the quake. But the supply had been gradually restored.
