Five members of the same family in northwest China were killed on Tuesday after a landslide buried their house in which they were sleeping.

Debris from a nearby hill buried the house of Wang Yuping and his family at 5:20?AM Tuesday in Niwan village, near Lanzhou, capital of Gansu province, according to Wang Linbang, a neighbor of the family.

Wang said his fellow villagers managed to enter the house after clearing the debris two hours after the landslide, but found five people - Wang Yuping and his wife, Wang's elder brother's wife and her two children - all dead.

Police have evacuated dozes of households under threat. Villagers have blamed continuous rain for the landslide.

(Xinhua News Agency November 7, 2007)