Rescue workers have pulled 29 bodies from the debris of a central China landslide and are continuing their search for victims, Xinhua reported. Most of the dead are believed to have been aboard a long-distance bus bound from Shanghai to Lichuan, a small city in central Hubei. However, one of the five victims recovered in the early hours of Saturday was found outside the wrecked bus, the rescue headquarters told Xinhua. A spokesman said it was possible that he could be one of the two workers reported missing after the landslide occurred on Tuesday. Immediately after the accident, one highway worker was confirmed dead and one injured. Two others were buried. The four had been clearing water from the road at the time of the accident. The other 28 dead were found inside the bus, which was buried under an avalanche of boulders, earth and mud at the entrance to a railway tunnel in Badong County, Enshi Prefecture. Rescuers had to blow up some of the huge boulders to reach the bus. A spokesman with the Badong county government said the bus was crumbled to a pile of wreckages only 50 centimeters thick, and nearly all the bodies were so badly disfigured that they had to be identified using DNA technologies. Zeng Xiangguo, director of the prefecture police bureau, said 30 DNA samples have been collected and analyses are being done to determine the dead people's identities. The government of Lichuan city has set up seven work teams to handle the accident. Government employees from the victims' townships and villages were sent to console the grieving families. The landslide occurred at around 8:40 a.m. Tuesday at the entrance of the railway tunnel, leaving about 3,000 cubic meters of rubble on State Highway 318, which runs below the tunnel. The highway, connecting Shanghai and the Tibet Autonomous Region, is the main route for all motor vehicles in western Hubei. The bus was believed to have been carrying 31 people, most of whom were from Lichuan, including two drivers and one conductor. Among the passengers was a four-month-old baby, two one-year-old toddlers and an eight-year-old boy.
