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At least 47 people are unaccounted for in China’s Yunnan province after it was hit by a landslide on Monday morning.
Hundreds of others were forced to evacuated as the disaster struck just before 6am in the village of Liangshui, near the town of Tangfang in Zhenxiong County.
While there are no immediate reports of deaths or injuries, rescue efforts were underway to find victims buried in 18 separate houses.
The cause of the landslide wasn’t immediately known, although photos from the scene appeared to show snow on the ground.
Yunnan, in southwest China, is among several provinces in the country’s southern region currently experiencing a cold wave and bitter temperatures near or below freezing, according to the National Meteorological Centre.
The landslide came just over a month after China‘s most powerful earthquake in almost a decade struck to the north-west in a remote region between Gansu and Qinghai province.
At least 149 people were killed in the 6.2-magnitude quake that struck on 18 December, reducing homes to rubble and triggering heavy mudslides that inundated two villages in Qinghai province.
Nearly 1,000 were injured and more than 14,000 homes were destroyed in China‘s deadliest earthquake in nine years.