BEIJING (AP) - More than 120 people were buried by a landslide that caused huge rocks and a mass of earth to come crashing into their homes in a mountain village in southwestern China early Saturday, officials said.
The landslide, which came from a mountain, engulfed a cluster of 62 homes and a hotel in the village of Xinmo in Mao County at about 6 a.m., the Sichuan provincial government said. Officials said 1 mile of road was buried in the disaster.
By 10 p.m., the Xinhua News Agency reported workers had retrieved 15 bodies from the debris.
"It's the biggest landslide to hit this area since the Wenchuan earthquake," Wang Yongbo, an official leading one of the rescue efforts, told state broadcaster China Central Television. Wang was referring to China's deadliest earthquake this century, a magnitude 7.9 temblor that struck Sichuan province in May 2008, killing nearly 90,000 people.
Rescuers pulled out three people, two of whom had survived, the official Sichuan Daily newspaper said on its microblog. The paper also said a family of three, including a 1-month-old baby, managed to escape just as the landslide started to hit their house.
Qiao Dashuai told CCTV the baby saved the family because he was woken up by the child's crying and was going to change the baby's diaper when he heard a noise that alerted him to the landslide.
"We heard a strange noise at the back of our house, and it was rather loud," Qiao said. "Wind was coming into the room so I wanted to close the door. When we came out, water flow swept us away instantly." He said they struggled against the flood of water until they met medical workers who took them to a hospital. Qiao said his parents and other relatives had not been found.
Mao County, or Maoxian, sits on the eastern margin of the Tibetan plateau and is home to approximately 110,000 people, according to the government's website. Most residents are of the Qiang ethnic minority. The village is known locally for tourism, and Chinese reports said it was unclear if tourists were among those buried by the landslide.
The landslide blocked a 1.2-mile section of a river. The provincial government said on its website that an estimated 282 million cubic feet of earth and rock - equivalent to more than 3,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools - had slid down the mountain.
Experts told CCTV the landslide was likely triggered by rain. A meteorologist interviewed by CCTV said there was light rain in the area that would continue for a few days.
Search and rescue efforts were underway involving more than 400 workers, including police. CCTV showed footage of rescuers in bright orange uniforms using earth movers and excavators but also relying on ropes to pull at huge rocks and shovels to dig up the dirt.