The information was released by the deputy commander of the Lai Chau Provincial Military Command’s Chief of Staff, Colonel Hoang Van Ky, who said that more than 200 people, including police, military, border guards and local authorities, were involved in the rescue work.

The landslide occurred around 10:00 a.m. this Friday morning at the construction site of the Ta Pao Ho 1A hydroelectric project, and left, besides the five missing, four other people injured, who received timely medical attention and are in stable condition.

As the senior official explained, as quoted by the Tienphong newspaper, the rescue forces had to resort to various methods to reach the site of the disaster as quickly as possible.

The rescuers first used excavators to level the high points of the slope and then used specialized vehicles to reach the bodies of the victims and move them away from the site of the tragedy.

Because the slope is about 40 meters high and there are about 200 cubic meters of rock and soil below, the rescue operation was very difficult, said Colonel Van Ky.

The cause of the landslide, said the investor´s representative, was the continuous rainfall over many days, which caused a hill to collapse and fall on workers cleaning the project’s foundation pit.

Shortly after the event was announced the day before, Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh issued an urgent directive asking ministries, agencies and local authorities to concentrate all their efforts on dealing with the consequences of the severe landslide.

abo/mem/mpm