46 still missing under debris of structure two weeks away from completion

A bridge that was due to open this month in China’s Hunan province has collapsed, killing at least 22 people. Rescuers are searching through tonnes of rubble for 46 people still missing after the accident.

123 workers were working on the 320m (1049ft) bridge at the time, most of them removing scaffolding, the Xinhua news agency reports.

The Chinese government has pledged to address a chronic problem with unsafe bridges across their country, announcing a plan to fix or rebuild by 2010 the more than 6,000 structures currently identified as dangerous and having damage to “important structural components.”

The disaster, at a popular tourist resort in Fenghuang county, has occurred just two weeks after a similar collapse in Minneapolis in the United States.

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