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BEIJING (AP) – Rescue efforts ended at a two-story restaurant in a northern Chinese town that collapsed during a local resident’s 80th birthday celebration, killing 29 people, authorities said Sunday.
The Emergency Management Ministry said 28 other people were injured, seven of them seriously, when the building suddenly collapsed on Saturday.
There was no immediate information on what caused the collapse or on the fate of the birthday guest and other celebrators.
Hundreds of rescuers using high-tech sniffer dogs, cranes and sensors had searched the rubble, lifting concrete slabs in hopes of freeing the survivors.
The official China Daily newspaper said the building collapsed at 9:40 am on Saturday. He said the Cabinet Occupational Safety Commission would oversee the investigation into the cause of the accident.
While China has seen significant improvements in industrial safety, building regulations are sometimes ignored, particularly in rural areas such as Xiangfen County in Shanxi Province, about 630 kilometers (400 miles) southwest of Beijing, where the restaurant was located.
The region is in the heart of the coal mining country of China, where thousands of miners have died in explosions, landslides and floods over the years.
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This story has been corrected to remove the reference to 57 people who were rescued alive from the rubble. Fifty-seven is the total number of dead and wounded.
