Five people were buried on Thursday morning in a landslide in north China's Shanxi Province, local police said.

The landslide took place at between 2:00 AM and 3:00 AM at a village in Linxian County, Luliang City, destroying eight cave dwellings and burying a family of five, said a spokesman with the Luliang Public Security Bureau.

The police received a report of the landslide at 5:00 AM. More than 200 people were digging the buried.

Rescuers said there was slim hope for the survival of the five buried people, as they were under some 9,000 cubic meters of earth.

(Xinhua News Agency July 10, 2008)