Official in China city hit by deadly landslide kills himself

A Chinese local government official has taken his own life a week after a landslide from a pile-up of construction waste in his city left scores missing and presumed dead.

The former executive of the Guangming New District Urban Management Bureau, a man surnamed Xu, had committed suicide, region police said in a microblog post, including that police had gotten a report that a man had fallen from a building late on Sunday.

Police would coordinate with the central government’s investigation and “handle in accordance with the law the criminal suspects”, Xinhua said, without elaborating.

The Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper identified Xu as Xu Yuanan.

Police officers & state media haven’t stated whether or not Xu had been directly chargeable for authorizing the dump & no people or organizations have been blamed.

Yang Huanning, chief of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), pledged to thoroughly investigate the landslide and severely punish those responsible.

At least seven people have been confirmed dead while more than 70 are missing.

Search operations are ongoing, but only one survivor – a migrant worker – has been rescued at the site, where 380,000 square meters (454,500 square yards) were covered in construction waste.

Densely packed with few air pockets, the mud and debris were piled four stories tall in some places.

Xinhua News Agency earlier reported the dump was being used 10 months after it was supposed to have stopped taking waste, earning Yixianglong 7.5 million yuan (HK$9 million) in fees.

Residents, however, have told media that trucks had continued dumping at the hill, even in the days before the landslide – which has been recognized as a man-made disaster.