October 10, 2016
BEIJING (AFP) - Four people were killed when a group of houses collapsed in China on Monday, a local government said.
The four buildings caved in during the early hours in Wenzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, the Lucheng district government said in a social media posting.
Four people were found dead and five had been been rescued, it said, without giving indications of the missing.
The official Xinhua news agency said rescuers were still verifying the number of people trapped in the debris. It reported earlier on social media that an "initial estimate" was that more than 20 people had been buried.
The cause of the collapse was under investigation.
Pictures from the scene showed workers in orange suits sifting through a mountain of ruins.
China has seen several building collapses in recent years, with some blamed on low quality construction.
In May, 16 people were reported dead after a residential building in Guizhou province in the southwest collapsed due to landslides.
Two people were killed and 24 injured in April when a storm brought down a wholesale market building in Foshan city, in the southern province of Guangdong.
