China lowers number of missing in landslide to 73

Beijing: The number of people missing from a huge landslide that buried a mountain village in southwest China last weekend has been revised down from 93 to 73, authorities said on Tuesday.

The confirmed number of dead remained at 10 after heavy rain brought down the side of a mountain on to Xinmo village in Sichuan province on Saturday.

But an additional 20 people were reported to be "safe", according to the Tibetan and Qiang Autonomous Prefecture of Aba.

The statement said the figure was revised after officials "visited households, checked household registration and telephone records and conducted public cross-examination".

It did not explain if any of those people had been rescued from the rubble or if they had been wrongly reported missing.

Meanwhile, the official Xinhua news agency said more rock and mud fell on the site of the tragedy on Tuesday.

No one was injured in the new and smaller avalanche as the area where the village once stood had been cordoned off following warnings on Monday, Xinhua reported.

Rescue workers who had been digging through the rubble since Saturday`s disaster were evacuated from the area on Monday in anticipation of another collapse.