Villas built illegally in Qinling Mountain in Huxian county under Xi'an, Shaanxi province, were rebuilt after they were moved in order to restore the ecological environment, xinhuanet.com reported on Aug 16.

Construction of the villas, which have 170,000 square meters of planned floor area, started in 2003 but was not completed.

Since the project broke regulations protecting the mountain's ecological environment, the Xi'an Qinling Ecological Environment Protection Committee urged the developer to remove the villas on Aug 7.

The committee said that the site would be re-planned and rebuilt for new tourism project which could not tell in detail.

However, some new villas were found built on the original site after the old villas were removed.

The new developer said that the old villas developed by the former developers could not be sold because they had inappropriate building structures and new ones would be built instead.

The local ecological environmental protection provisions ban such projects being developed on the mountain and people questioned why the project restarted.