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Dozens of people were buried and eight confirmed killed when a landslide struck a remote and mountainous part of southwestern China on Monday.<\/p>\n
The pre-dawn landslide buried 18 homes and sparked the evacuation of more than 200 people when it struck in Zhenxiong County, Yunnan province, state media said.<\/p>\n
Eight people are confirmed dead and rescuers have extracted four, according to a report by state broadcaster CCTV<\/em> at around 5:30pm (0930 GMT), though the condition of the four was not immediately clear.<\/p>\n Two hundred rescue workers have been dispatched as well as dozens of fire engines and other equipment, CCTV<\/em> said.<\/p>\n And as temperatures plunged on Monday night, dozens were still trapped, state news agency Xinhua<\/em> said.<\/p>\n Rescuers are \u201cusing all kinds of tools to search for survivors\u201d, Xinhua<\/em> said.<\/p>\n One local told the state-run Beijing News outlet that she was asleep when the disaster hit and that parts of her ceiling had fallen onto her head.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the time I thought it was an earthquake, but later I knew it was the hillslope collapsing,\u201d another resident told the outlet. Both were quoted under pseudonyms.<\/p>\n Footage shared on social media by a local broadcaster showed emergency workers in orange jumpsuits and helmets forming ranks outside a fire station as snowflakes whirled through the air.<\/p>\n Other images showed rescuers picking through towering piles of collapsed masonry in which a few personal belongings could be seen.<\/p>\n Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered \u201call-out\u201d rescue efforts, CCTV<\/em> reported. Xi \u201cdemanded that rescue forces are organised quickly\u2026 and efforts made to reduce casualties as far as possible,\u201d the broadcaster reported him as saying.<\/p>\n He added that it was \u201cnecessary to properly handle the work of comforting the families of the deceased and resettling affected people\u201d.<\/p>\n CCTV broadcast an image it said showed a firefighter working to pull a trapped villager from inside a home affected by the disaster.<\/p>\n The local village head declined to speak about the landslide when contacted by phone, telling AFP<\/em> that he was \u201ctoo busy\u201d.<\/p>\n Landslides are common in Yunnan, a far-flung and largely impoverished region of China where steep mountain ranges butt against the Himalayan plateau.<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s disaster occurred in a rural area surrounded by towering peaks dusted with snow, state media footage showed.<\/p>\n There was no immediate official explanation for what may have caused the landslide. Efforts to establish what happened are underway, Xinhua<\/em> reported.<\/p>\n China has experienced a string of natural disasters in recent months, some following extreme weather events such as sudden, heavy downpours.<\/p>\n In September, rainstorms in the southern region of Guangxi triggered a mountain landslide that killed at least seven people, according to media reports.<\/p>\nLandslides common<\/h2>\n