Rescuers pull first body from rubble of China landslide

The body recovered from the sea of mud and debris early on Tuesday was the first confirmed casualty since the landslide swallowed 33 buildings in the Hengtaiyu industrial park in the southern boomtown of Shenzhen on Sunday, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Rescue workers scoured through the 380,000 sq m (94 acres) site lit up with floodlights, photos on social media showed, using heavy diggers to reach possible survivors trapped under mud up to 10 metres (33 feet) deep.

Excavators worked over just a small patch of the vast stretch of red earth and debris, digging away amid the crumpled shells of buildings and vehicles, a Reuters witness said.

Rescue dogs roamed over the site looking for survivors, while curious bystanders stood at the fringes.

The People's Daily newspaper said on its microblog post 81 people were still missing.

A report carried on the China defence ministry's website said police and military forces were in a "race against time" and were using drones to map out the scene and life-detecting probes to find possible signs of survivors.

It said rescuers had freed some people trapped in damaged buildings. The number of missing had been listed as 85 late on Monday.

The multi-storey buildings toppled within seconds after the mudslide smashed into them in Shenzhen's Guangming New District.

The mud had come from an overfull waste dump nearby, which official reports said should have been closed in February.

The frequency of industrial accidents has raised questions about safety standards in China after three decades of breakneck growth in the world's second-largest economy.

Just four months ago, more than 160 people were killed in big chemical blasts in the northern port city of Tianjin.