village, with some residents giving up hope of finding survivors.
A huge
landslide crashed down on the village of Xinmo, in mountainous Sichuan
province, as dawn broke on Saturday.
Authorities
at the scene said on Sunday that 10 bodies had been confirmed recovered,
contradicting a report by the Xinhua state news agency on Saturday saying that
15 people had been confirmed killed.
On Sunday
industrial excavators removed rubble at the site of the landslide while workers
in hard hats searched for signs of life as relatives of the lost cried or
looked on stone-faced nearby.
"This
is useless," villager Han Jianying, searching for missing family members,
told Reuters. "Everyone's going to be in pieces anyway."
Heavy rain
triggered the landslide, authorities said.
More light
showers are likely but are not expected to affect the search, state broadcaster
China Central Television reported.
A couple and
their two-month-old baby were the only survivors reported to have been found
alive. Authorities reduced the number of missing after 15 people were confirmed
as safe, the Xinmo village propaganda department said on its microblog.
It was not
clear if the 15 had been rescued or had simply been away at the time of the
disaster.
The rescue
involved more than 3,000 people despite the danger of more landslides, Xinhua
reported.
Geological
experts said the chances of anyone surviving under the rubble were slim, Xinhua
reported.
"We
weren't able to pull anyone out alive," said Wu Youheng, who lives in a
neighboring village and rushed to help on Saturday.
"We
pulled out two people but they were already dead. I think it's too late,
they're unlikely to find anyone else alive."
The area is
prone to landslides but the scale of Saturday's slide was unprecedented, Wu
added.
Wu's wife,
Zhang Xiaohong, said they often sleep in other villages for fear of landslides
but could not afford to move to a safer part of Mao county.
County
residents are primarily poor farmers of the Qiang ethnic minority and the area
is the target of a poverty alleviation project, government officials said.
Much of
those efforts focuses on attracting tourists to nearby scenic spots and an
ancient village. Xinhua reported that all 142 tourists in the area had been
evacuated from the area.
The names of
the missing were posted on government websites.
Wang Yong, a
member of China's State Council, or cabinet, dispatched to the disaster site,
urged an all-out search-and-rescue effort and measures to prevent further
disasters by monitoring geological activity, Xinhua reported.
U.N.
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in offering his condolences, said in a
statement that the United Nations is prepared to offer any support.
Sichuan
province is prone to earthquakes, including an 8.0 magnitude tremor in central
Sichuan's Wenchuan county in 2008 that killed nearly 70,000 people.
REUTERS
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