BEIJING — The death toll rose to 48 on Thursday as search efforts continued in southeast China after a stretch of road collapsed in a mountainous area, sending more than 20 cars down a steep slope.
Meizhou city authorities said three other people were unidentified, awaiting DNA testing. It was not immediately clear if they had died, which would raise the death toll to 51. Another 30 people had non-life-threatening injuries.
The landslide occurred around 2 a.m. Wednesday after a month of heavy rain in a mountainous area of Guangdong province. The vehicles fell down the slope and caught fire when they caught fire.
The search was still ongoing, Meizhou City Mayor Wang Hui said at a late afternoon news conference. No foreigners were found among the victims, he said.
Search efforts have been hampered by rain and the sliding of earth and gravel down the slope. The disaster left a curved, earth-colored gash in the otherwise green forest landscape.
“Because some of the vehicles involved caught fire, the difficulty of the rescue operation increased,” said Wen Yongdeng, Communist Party secretary for the Meizhou emergency management office.
“Most of the vehicles were buried in the ground during the collapse process, with a large volume of earth covering them,” he said.
He added that prolonged heavy rains have saturated the soil in the area, “making it prone to secondary disasters during the rescue process.”