18 school children buried in China landslide: State media

Beijing: Eighteen primary school students were buried on Thursday in a landslide in a southwestern Chinese region that was hit by deadly earthquakes last month, state media said.

The Xinhua news agency said a classroom building and two farm houses were buried in the landslide, which also trapped another person, in Zhenhe village in Yunnan province.

It said Youfangtai Primary School was buried under the landslide, but gave no other details. It was unclear why pupils were in class during a week that is a national holiday in China.

Zhenhe is in Yiliang county, which was one of the regions worst-hit when two 5.6-magnitude earthquakes struck Yunnan on September 7.

The quakes left 81 people dead, with another 820 people injured and 201,000 displaced in the resource-rich but impoverished region.

Southwest China is prone to earthquakes. In May 2008, an 8.0-magnitude tremor rocked Sichuan and parts of neighbouring Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, killing tens of thousands and flattening swathes of the province.

Corner-cutting in construction projects leading to shoddy buildings, especially schools, was blamed for the death toll being as high as it was in the 2008 Sichuan quake.