Up to 600 rescuers were digging through rock and mud with their bare hands in a desperate attempt Friday to find about 50 people left missing in a landslide in southwest China, state press reported.

The rock slide in mountainous Sichuan province left four people dead early Thursday after it engulfed the makeshift office and living quarters of a road construction team along the Dadu river, China Central Television (CCTV) said.

State press said late Thursday that four people had been killed, four injured, and 53 were still missing.

However, CCTV said up to 40 construction workers were believed to be either buried under the debris or washed away by the river.

Local officials were also trying to confirm whether a team of about 10 rock quarry workers were at the site when the disaster struck, it added.

The workers were building a new road to skirt the reservoir of the Changhe hydroelectric dam which is now under construction, reports said.

"The road to the construction site is covered with rocks and has blocked excavation equipment from arriving," the television report said.

"Rescue workers can only use their hands to search for the missing."

CCTV footage showed the encampment buried under a huge rock slide with debris from makeshift shelters scattered and half submerged along the banks of the river.

Over 140 workers at the dam have been evacuated from the area, it added.

About three kilometres (two miles) of road located in Kangding county, an area traditionally populated by ethnic Tibetans in Sichuan province, was buried by the slide, it said.

The 12.7 billion yuan (1.8 billion dollar) project is being built for the Datang Group, a state-run power company, according to the dam's website run by Sinohydro, China's largest dam builder.

It was not immediately clear if the dam itself was damaged in the landslide.

Sichuan province was rocked in May 2008 by a massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered huge landslides across the region's mountainous terrain. Nearly 87,000 people were left dead or missing.

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