29 missing in China landslide

A massive landslide that blocked a river in southwest China and threatened a hydroelectric dam has also left 29 people missing, state media reported Saturday.

The landslide occurred on the Dadu river in Sichuan province's Hanyuan county late Thursday, leaving two people dead and 18 others injured, the Ministry of Water Resources said in a report on its website.

According to the Beijing News, 29 people were missing with most believed to be migrant workers who had transferred from a local train and were apparently making their way to a work site.The paper said that at least 10 vehicles were damaged or destroyed in the landslide that wiped out a road along the river, but the report did not clarify if the missing workers were in any of those vehicles.

A search and rescue effort is ongoing, it said.

Early Friday, the massive flow of mud and rocks blocked the river, leaving only a trickle flowing through to the Pubugou hydroelectric dam and raising concerns that a sudden breach would engulf downstream communities, Xinhua news agency reported earlier.

"Several tens of thousands of people" had been evacuated from Jinkouhe district of Leshan prefecture, home to the world's largest Buddha, which overlooks the Dadu, Xinhua said.Torrential rain and landslides have killed nearly 70 people and left almost as many missing in south and central China since the beginning of June, state media reported last week.

On July 24, another landslide on the Dadu river engulfed makeshift housing for a dam construction crew in Shalian, leaving about 50 people missing and four confirmed dead, earlier reports said.

Parts of the Dadu run through areas rocked by the huge, 8.0-magnitude earthquake in May last year that triggered landslides in Sichuan's mountainous regions. Nearly 87,000 people were left dead or missing in the quake. -AFP