BEIJING, Jan 22 — Rescuers have retrieved the bodies of 12 people killed when a landslide smashed into a hotel in central China, the official Xinhua news agency reported today.

The three-storey Mirage Hotel in Hubei province was slammed by 3,000 cubic metres of debris that poured down a slope behind the building at 7:30 pm Friday, it said. 

The owner of the hotel, He Dahui, was killed in the disaster. 

The landslide dropped rocks of up to 150 tonnes and trapped 15 people in the Mirage Hotel’s first-floor restaurant. 

Rescuers pulled five people from the rubble, but two died in hospital, according to Xinhua. 

Concerns about triggering a further collapse delayed rescue work by five hours, it said. 

In October landslides battered eastern China in the wake of torrential rains brought by Typhoon Megi, causing widespread damage and killing at least eight. — AFP