BEIJING: The death toll from a collapsed highway in southeastern China climbed to 48 on Thursday as searchers dug for a second day through a treacherous and mountainous area.

One side of the four-lane highway in the city of Meizhou gave way about 2 a.m. on Wednesday after a month of heavy rains in Guangdong province. Twenty-three vehicles fell down a steep slope, some sending up flames as they caught fire. Construction cranes were used to lift out the burnt-out and mutilated vehicles.

Officials in Meizhou said three other people were unidentified, pending DNA testing. It wasn’t immediately clear if they had died, which would bring the death toll to 51. Another 30 people had non-life-threatening injuries.

The search was still ongoing, Meizhou city Mayor Wang Hui said at a late-afternoon news conference. No foreigners have been found among the victims, he said.

Search work has been hampered by rain and land and gravel sliding down the slope. The disaster left a curving earth-colored gash in the otherwise verdant forest landscape. Excavators dug out a wider area on the slope.

“Because some of the vehicles involved caught fire, the difficulty of the rescue operation has increased,” said Wen Yongdeng, the Communist Party secretary for the Meizhou emergency management bureau.

“Most of the vehicles were buried in soil during the collapse, with a large volume of soil covering them,” he said.

He added that the prolonged heavy rainfall has saturated soil in the area, “making it prone to secondary disasters during the rescue process.”

Over 56 centimeters (22 inches) of rain has fallen in the past four weeks in the county where the roadway collapsed, more than four times as much as last year. Some villages in Meizhou flooded in early April, and the city has seen more rain in recent days.

Parts of Guangdong province have seen record rains and flooding in the past two weeks, as well as hail. A tornado killed five people in Guangzhou, the provincial capital, during rain and hail storms last weekend.

The highway section collapsed on the first day of a five-day May Day holiday, when many Chinese are traveling at home and abroad.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping said that all of China’s regions should improve their monitoring and early warning measures and investigate any risks to ensure the safety of the public and social stability, state broadcaster CCTV said.

LONDON: Police in London said they made three arrests at demonstrations held on Wednesday to protest against the sale of UK arms to Israel.

Protesters gathered outside the offices of the Department for Business and Trade in central London and more than 1,000 workers and trade unionists held protests at sites linked to BAE Systems across the UK.

“We are policing a protest in Admiralty Place and Horse Guards Parade,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.

“Officers have made three arrests after protesters blocked access to a building. Protesters must stay within the law.”

Police Scotland also confirmed its officers were called to a site in Glasgow to deal with protesters on Wednesday.

Members of Workers for a Free Palestine said the group was “escalating its tactics” by targeting BAE Systems cities and the British government department on the same day, the Independent reported.

“Our movement forced the issue of an arms embargo onto the table and polling shows the majority of the British public want to see arms sales to Israel banned, yet the government and also the Labour Party continue to ignore the will of the people,” a WFP protester named Tania, who took to the streets in London, told the newspaper.

“The government has sought to play down the scale of its arms supplies to Israel but the reality is UK arms and military support play a vital role in the Israeli war machine and evidence that three British aid workers were killed by a drone partly produced in the UK shows the extent of British complicity in Israel’s genocide,” she said.

Another protester, named Jamie, who was demonstrating in Glasgow, said: “Our fundamental aim is for the UK government to introduce an arms embargo. It’s the morally right thing to do.

“It’s vital that action is taken. It’s been almost seven months of death and destruction in Palestine and the idea that that is being committed by weapons that are being produced in our neighborhoods is horrifying.

“Our long-term goal is an arms embargo from the government but our short-term aim here today is to just disrupt business as usual for BAE, to disrupt the manufacture, to cost them time, cost them money and slow down the trade of weapons to Israel.”

BAE Systems said it respected people’s “right to protest peacefully” and that its arms exports complied with regulations.

“The ongoing violence in the Middle East is having a devastating impact on civilians in the region and we hope the parties involved find a way to end the violence as soon as possible,” it said.

“We operate under the tightest regulation and comply fully with all applicable defense export controls, which are subject to ongoing assessment.”