KUNMING - Three people died and two others are missing following a landslide that buried two houses at a village in Southwest China's Yunnan province Friday morning, local authorities said.

Rescuers have retrieved three bodies and four injured people from the rubble of homes that were destroyed by the landslide, which occurred in Yanjin county in the city of Zhaotong, a spokesman for the county's Communist Party of China (CPC) committee said.

The landslide happened around 5 am following days of heavy rain, burying nine people in two homes.

The injured have been taken to a local hospital.

Rescuers are continuing to search for the two missing.