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Some 91 people were missing Monday after a huge landslide caused by illegal soil dumping buried more than 30 factory and residential buildings in a sea of mud, China's second industrial disaster in four months, AFP reported.

Witnesses of the landslide late Sunday morning described a mass of red earth and mud racing towards an industrial park in the city of Shenzhen in "huge waves" before burying or crushing homes and factories, twisting some of them into grotesque shapes.

Drone footage showed chocolate-coloured mud had ploughed through and over buildings and tossed aside trucks like discarded toys.

One weeping migrant worker told how he lost contact with 16 friends or family members after his home was buried.

The landslide covers an area of 380,000 square meters -- about 60 football fields -- in many areas more than 10 meters thick, said Liu Qingsheng, the vice mayor of the city bordering Hong Kong, in a press conference Monday.

"It is the first time in China that we have seen a landslide on this scale," said Liu Guonan of the China Academy of Railway Sciences.

"The soil on the slope is very high in water content so it's hard to even walk across it -- people's feet sink into it," he added.

There were 91 people missing as of 9:00 am (0100 GMT) Monday, according to officials from the city's emergency office cited by the Shenzhen Evening News.