8 dead as massive sinkhole swallows eight-lane road in Foshan, China (PHOTOS, VIDEO)

Eight people have died and three remain missing in southern China after a massive sinkhole yesterday swallowed a major road in the middle of a city.

The eight-lane road caved in after a water leak occurred on the construction site of a subway station in Foshan, a city of seven million people, authorities said Thursday.

Nine people were rescued from the sinkhole, which is said to be as big as two basketball courts. The condition of the survivors are reportedly stable.


The accident took place near the No.1 Ring Road Bridge on Jihua Xi Road above the construction site of Foshan's Subway Line 2, according to China Central Television Station.

The report said the collapsed area was as large as two basketball courts with a depth of five to six metres (16 to 19 feet). The report also showed an aerial video of the affected site.

Pictures of the scene showed a huge swathe of mud and broken concrete in the middle of the two-way thoroughfare in the city's Changcheng district.

The sudden leak flooded the underground site and caused a 30-metre-long (100-foot-long) stretch of the road to collapse at around 8:40pm local time, the city government said in a statement today on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.

The statement said an initial leak was detected by the construction workers at around 7pm, but the workers failed to control the situation.

It was unclear whether the dead and missing were all construction workers.

Rescue works is underway for the three missing. The authorities are investigating the details of the accident.

Industrial accidents are common in China, where safety regulations are often poorly enforced, which has angered citizens.

Official figures show 38,000 people were killed in workplace accidents in 2017.

Last May, 12 workers died following an explosion in a high-speed rail tunnel construction site in the southwest province of Guizhou.