Anger after 128 killed by huge China mudslide

By Ben Blanchard

TASHAN, China (Reuters) - Angry residents wailed and protested as rescuers in northern China hunted on Wednesday for dozens of victims still missing two days after a deluge of sludge from a collapsed mine waste reservoir killed at least 128 people.

The death toll from the wall of mud that roared through a market and submerged some buildings to their roofs had more than doubled from earlier estimates to 128, state television said late on Wednesday.

An earlier report on a state radio website said that "several hundred" were missing, although it did not give further details.

Mud blanketed fields and houses for several kilometers below the Tashan mine, while hundreds of rescue workers clambered past clothes, furniture and uprooted trees that stuck out of drier sections, and used excavators to dig through viscous muck.

Many of the victims were apparently migrant workers from southwest China. It may be harder to pin down the number of dead and missing because they have no family in the area.

Dozens of friends and relatives hoping for news of people feared trapped were kept away from the site by police, and some accused officials of cold-hearted incompetence.

"It's not because of the rain. It wasn't a natural disaster, it was man-made," said a migrant worker surnamed Zhang, who said his friend was probably killed.

"Whole families have gone. So many are dead. Why aren't you digging out our relatives?" a middle-aged woman, Zheng Xiongmei, screamed at a local official.

The Chinese government took extraordinary steps to ensure the nation was trouble-free throughout the Beijing Olympic Games in August. But this disaster, the first big accident since then, is a reminder that the country's mines remain perilous.

Heavy rain triggered the disintegration of the holding pond at the iron mine after it had been overfilled with waste ore, state media quoted an initial investigation saying.

CROWDED MARKETPLACE

Residents from seven nearby villages had packed a marketplace that was buried by the mudslide, the Beijing News reported.

The Communist Party propaganda chief of Xiangfen county, where the mine in located, dismissed reports of hundreds of dead as "rumor" but refused to estimate the toll.

"It's all conjecture at the moment," the propaganda chief, Dong Fengyi, said in an interview. Teams of officials were registering names of people who locals and migrant workers said were missing, she said.

By Wednesday morning the rain that hampered early rescue efforts had eased. More than 2,200 police, firefighters and villagers have been hunting for survivors, state television said.