HANOI - A LANDSLIDE killed 18 workers on Saturday at a hydro-electric plant under construction in central Vietnam, state television and a local official said.
Part of the stony mountain overlooking the Ban Ve site gave way at around 10am local time, overwhelming the workers.
State VTV television said none of the bodies had been recovered by evening.
It did not indicate how many people in total were working at the site at the time of the accident.
A provincial party official who did not want to be named said part of the mountain had just been dynamited to clear space for the power plant, although state television reported that workers had been using it to quarry stone for construction work.
Few other details were immediately available about the accident in Nghe An province, some 300 kilometres south of Hanoi.
According to VTV, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung sent a condolence message to families of the victims and ordered an inquiry to determine the cause of the accident.
In September, a bridge being built in southern Vietnam collapsed with the loss of more than 50 lives.
Booming Vietnam is one of East Asia's success stories but its power plants are struggling to match the growing requirements of consumers and an economy that expanded more than eight per cent last year.
The World Bank estimates Vietnam, a nation of 84 million people, will have to double electricity production capacity - to more than 25,400 megawatts by 2010.
Nearly 40 per cent of its power comes from hydro-electric production. -- AFP
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18 killed by landslide in Vietnam 
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