EMERGENCY TEAMS IN the Sichuan province of south-western China are battling against time to locate 28 people missing after a rain-triggered landslide killed one person and buried homes.

Nearly 1,000 personnel, including police, firefighters and medical professionals, continued to work in the rescue operation following the landslide in the village of Jinping on Saturday.

Some officers navigated through the remains of collapsed buildings, using drones and life-detection radars to locate any signs of life with the help of local officials who were familiar with the area, state broadcaster CCTV said.

They rescued two injured people and evacuated about 360 others after 10 houses and a manufacturing building were buried, CCTV reported.

At a news conference on Sunday, authorities said preliminary assessments attributed the disaster to recent heavy rainfall and local geological conditions.

They said these factors transformed a landslide into a debris flow, resulting in an accumulation of debris stretching more than half a mile in length.

Chinese vice premier Liu Guozhong was at the site to guide the rescue operation and visited the affected residents.

He urged authorities to make every effort to search for the missing people, according to official news agency Xinhua.