BEIJING, (Reuters) – Mudslides engulfed a town in  northwest China yesterday, killing at least 127 people and  leaving nearly 1,300 residents missing as rescue teams dug out  crushed homes and tried to blast away debris clogging a river.

The mass of flood water, mud and rock hit Zhouqu County in  Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Gansu province, a region  dominated by steep and barren hills, after torrential rains late  on Saturday, Xinhua news agency said, citing local officials.

Runoff from the downpour built up behind a landslide on the  Bailong River, which runs through the main town in Zhouqu.

The clogged river in the narrow valley then spilled over its  banks and caused flooding and mudslides that struck the town  after midnight, smashed a small hydro station, and left at least  127 dead, according to Xinhua.

More heavy rain is forecast on the river on Tuesday.

“Many single-storey homes have been wiped out and now we’re  waiting to see how many people got out,” one resident of Zhouqu,  a merchant called Han Jiangping, told Reuters by phone.

“We’ve  had landslides before, but never anything this bad. People are  trying to find their families and waiting for more rescuers.”

The disaster follows flooding in Pakistan which has killed  more than 1,600 people and in the Indian state of Jammu and  Kashmir. Flash floods have also killed at least 132 people in  the Himalayan region of Ladakh.

China’s death toll could rise sharply and Premier Wen Jiabao  rushed to the scene. There were 1,294 people missing, Xinhua  reported late yesterday, and it was unclear how many of them had  fled and survived. That count was lower than an earlier estimate  that nearly 2,000 were missing.