The landslide crashed onto the remote gold-diggers' town after heavy rain on Sunday, virtually cutting off communications with the outside world.

In the capital, presidential spokesman Mauricio Antezana said there were seven dead and a similar number of injured. A radio station said villagers digging through the mud had found eight bodies.

"The worrisome new information is that there are estimates of nearly 500 people missing," said Antezana. "But this data must be confirmed since the wireless communication could hardly be heard."

About 40 rescuers and earth moving machinery sent from La Paz, 250 kilometers (160 miles) away, arrived Tuesday morning to help in the grim search.

It took the rescue team more than 10 hours along a narrow, treacherous road to reach Chima.

Authorities said that weather permitting they would also send a helicopter, while a Hercules C130 transport plane loaded with emergency food supplies and equipment would land at a nearby airstrip.

The landslide only became known on Monday when residents managed to make radio contact with the capital to request assistance.

Many injured were being taken to hospital in the nearby town of Tipuani, but it was impossible to give an estimate as to the number of victims as everything had been submerged by the landslide, said Jose Plata, head of a mining cooperative in the region.

Authorities initially said as many as 700 people were missing, but later reports suggested the number was far fewer. The government had declared Chima a disaster area, Defense Minister Freddy Teodovich said.

"We don't know the real scale" of the disaster, he said.

Located in Bolivia's subtropical lowlands, Chima has a population of about 2,000 and is so small that most maps do not show it. The town sits on the side of a hill which was hard hit by heavy rains late last week.

Heavy rain has been drenching the region since the end of last week, and apparently caused a hillside to come crashing down onto the town.

The hill is pocked with excavations made by small-scale gold diggers, leaving it especially prone to landslides.

The Bolivian office of the UN World Food Program (WFP) pledged 5.5 tonnes of food for the victims.

Five years ago, a landslide destroyed 50 homes in Bolivia in a similar tragedy.

SPACE.WIRE