Former urban management official in Shenzhen falls to death

SHENZHEN - Shenzhen police said on Monday that a man who fell to death from a building Sunday night has been identified as a former official in the city's Guangming New District, where 75 are still unaccounted for following a human-caused landslide over a week ago.

Police said the man surnamed Xu was former head of the district's urban management bureau. The investigation has excluded the possibility of homicide.

It is not immediately known whether Xu had been put under investigation for the landslide, which hit 33 buildings in the Hengtaiyu industrial zone in the southern Chinese city on Dec 20, when a huge pile of construction waste collapsed.

Yang Huanning, chief of the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS), pledged to thoroughly investigate the landslide and severely punish those responsible. He was speaking at a meeting that followed a mourning ritual on Saturday.