After the heaviest snowstorm in 56 years lashed north-eastern China since Sunday, two tower crane collapses in the port city of Dalian killed five people, the local work safety watchdog revealed on Tuesday.

Gale-force winds toppled a tower crane at a construction site at 12:45 a.m. on Monday, which fell on a building housing a migrant family of three from Jiangsu Province. All three were killed, according to the Dalian Municipal Supervisory Bureau for work safety.

Another tower crane also crushed a steel factory and a nearby home, killing a mother inside with her baby, the bureau said.

Previously, the unrelenting blizzards killed three people in Shenyang when buildings in two marketplaces collapsed while two others died on Sunday when a workshop was crushed in the port city of Tianjin.

(Xinhua News Agency March 7, 2007)