14 Killed, 5 Missing After Mountain Collapses In China's Sichuan Province: Report

The rescue team of more than 180 people are still searching for the missing.

A mountain collapsed in China's Sichuan province leaving 14 dead and 5 missing/Representational Image

Source : Getty Images

14 people were killed while 5 went missing after a mountain collapsed in China’s Sichuan province on Sunday, said local officials. The incident took place at around 6am in the forest farm in Yongsheng Township, Jinkouhe District of the city. The rescue team of more than 180 people are still searching for the missing, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. 

In February this year, atleast four were killed and 49 more missing after a mine collapsed on China's northern Inner Mongolia region. The cause of the incident was not immediately known.

Over 900 rescue workers were deployed to the scene and President Xi Jinping had instructed authorities to make "every possible effort" to find survivors. 

The collapse buried more than 50 workers and left a pile of debris roughly 500m (1,640ft) across and an estimated 80m high.

In September last year, a part of a hanging glacier broke off at a national park in Chile's Patagonia region after higher temperatures and rainfall weakened the ice walls. 

Mines in China's Inner Mongolia region are some of China's top coal producers. Chinese mines have also been trying to boost output over the past year in a bid to boost supplies and lower prices, stated a BBC report. 

In a video that had gone viral, a glacier that sits atop a mountain about 200 metres (656 feet) high rumbled and broke off at Queulat National Park, located more than 1,200 kilometres(746 miles) south of Chile's capital.

A climate scientist at  University of Santiago Raul Cordero had said that detachments between masses of ice are normal but he noted that the frequency of these events is troubling, as per a Reuters report. 

"Because this type of event is triggered by heat waves or by intense liquid precipitation events and both things are also happening more and more frequently throughout the planet, not only in Chile," Cordero said.