18 students die in China landslide amid heavy rains

BEIJING (AP) - All 18 elementary school students buried in a landslide were confirmed dead on Friday, while one other person remained missing a day after the hillside collapsed and smothered part of a village in mountainous south-western China.

Rescuers recovered the last of the 18 students' remains early on Friday, about 18 hours after the landslide smothered the Tiantou Elementary School and three farmhouses and damaged six other homes and farmland in Zhenhe village, the Yiliang County government said on its website.

It said a person from one of the houses was missing, and a heavily injured person was in a hospital in stable condition.

The landslide dammed a river, causing its water to pool 15m across and 7m deep around the buried area, hampering rescue efforts and forcing the evacuation of 800 other people, the government said. Rescue teams removed the blockage and the water was subsiding, it said.