Two people missing in central China after being swallowed by huge city-centre sinkhole

Two Chinese people were rescued but two others remain missing after falling into a 600-square-metre sinkhole that formed within minutes in a city street following Monday night’s heavy rains, mainland media report.

Rescue efforts were continuing on Tuesday morning to try to find the two missing people, who were swallowed up by the five-metre deep hole beside Zhongyuan Road in the western part of the city of Zhengzhou, the news website Dahe.cn reported.

The huge sinkhole appeared in the capital of central Henan province at about 7.30pm, just after a heavy rainstorm had stopped.

One rescue worker at the scene told the Henan Business Daily that the sinkhole started out as a only crack in the road surface, but grew rapidly.