By Ben Blanchard
ZHOUQU, China (Reuters) - Engineers battled on Tuesday to drain an unstable lake created by the country's deadliest landslide in decades, threatening new misery for a devastated northwestern China town if it bursts its banks.
At least 337 people died in Zhouqu when a slew of mud and rocks engulfed swathes of the mountainside community in Gansu province at the weekend, and another 1,148 are still missing.
Grief-stricken locals were still waiting and weeping beside piles of mud and destroyed homes where relatives and friends were entombed, hoping at least to find the remains of loved ones.
"My niece is buried under there. She is a high school student, such a good girl," said weeping 42-year-old Yin Linfeng, who survived the landslide because she had been away.
"She was buried in the rubble when she was looking after my house...I will not give up. I want to see her body if she is dead. It was all my fault."
The last reported rescue of a survivor was on Monday morning, although emergency teams said they had found signs of life under a mound of mud and were digging frantically on Tuesday morning.
With tropical storm "Dianmu" heading for northern China, and expected to bring strong rains as far away as Gansu, the top priority was to keep the brimming lake from overflowing, or causing a catastrophic collapse of the temporary dam.
China's efficient military and rescue machine was in full swing, with roads cleared and heavy equipment arriving in the town to speed digging efforts.
With basic food and water needs on their way to being met, officials, spurred on by Premier Wen Jiabao's instructions to tackle the problem as soon as possible, are increasingly focussed on the loose dam thrown down by the landslide.
Water levels behind the barrier fell slightly after controlled explosions created a channel to funnel some off.
"This massive landslide disaster left a 10-metre high blockage in the Bailong river, creating a barrier lake, and flooding north and south Binhe road," the local government said in a report on the "disaster zone" released late on Monday.
Thousands of people have already been evacuated from villages downstream as a precaution, as the tsunami of mud and floodwaters would be almost impossible to escape.
(Writing by Emma Graham-Harrison; Editing by Ken Wills and Miral Fahmy)
