Photo taken by a mobile phone shows the landslide site in Taining County of Sanming City, southeast China's Fujian Province, May 8, 2016. Thirty-five people got lost after a landslide hit a construction site in Taining Sunday morning. (Xinhua/Qiu Canwang)
Chinese President Xi Jinping has urged maximum efforts to ensure a speedy rescue mission following Sunday's landslide in southeastern Fujian Province.
As of noon, thirty-four people were missing and another seven were injured after a landslide hit Taining County in Fujian at around 5 a.m. on Sunday morning.
In an instruction following the accident, Xi urged the Fujian local government and related departments to organize rescue work as quickly as possible.
He demanded all-out efforts to search for buried and missing people, and stressed proper treatment for the injured, while consoling the relatives of the injured and missing.
Xi also urged strengthening local monitoring and safety checks for hidden dangers to prevent secondary disasters.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang issued a written instruction calling for full efforts to search for and rescue those missing in the landslide and to treat the injured.
Li also asked the Ministry of Land and Resources to take the lead to form and dispatch a work team under the State Council to Fujian to oversee and help with rescue work.
The landslide, which buried the builders' temporary shed in a construction site of a hydropower station and damaged its offices, was triggered by heavy downpours that unleashed 191.6 millimeters of rain in 24 hours starting on Saturday.
