At least 14 killed in Chinese construction site landslide

A landslide at a construction site in southwest China’s Guizhou province has killed at least 14 people, state media has reported.

Workers were building a training facility for a hospital at the time of the landslide on Monday evening in Bijie city. Mountainous, inland Guizhou is one of China’s least developed regions.

Rescuers have found 14 bodies, as well as three injured people, with the cause of the accident “still under investigation”, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

More than 1,000 people joined the overnight rescue effort, Xinhua said. Rescue work has been “completed”, with the three injured currently in a stable condition.

Photos published by state media showed rescue crews working overnight under floodlights, with masses of debris and crushed machinery visible.

Construction and industrial accidents are not uncommon in China, often due to managers cutting corners, lax safety standards and decaying infrastructure.

In December, two workers were killed and 20 others rescued from a flooded coal mine in Shanxi province.

In July, 14 workers died in south China’s Guangdong province after a tunnel they were building flooded.

Among China’s worst accidents was a massive 2015 explosion at a chemical warehouse in the port city of Tianjin that killed 173 people, most of them firefighters and police officers.