(Bloomberg) -- Officials are tearing down illegal villas on the outskirts of the Chinese city of Xi'an, home of the famed terracotta warriors.
A Beijing News video showed some of the more than 1,000 homes demolished in a campaign that began in July. The villas were built without permits and damaged the environment, the official news service reported late Thursday.
Some landlords had simply abandoned their properties and couldn't be contacted by the authorities, it said.
President Xi Jinping personally ordered the crackdown, according to a local government statement last month.
China's terracotta army, unearthed in 1974, was created to guard the tomb of Emperor Qinshihuang, who lived from 259 to 210 B.C. It's one of the nation's big tourist draws.
To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Paul Panckhurst in Hong Kong at ppanckhurst@bloomberg.net;Charlie Zhu in Shanghai at qzhu46@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katrina Nicholas at knicholas2@bloomberg.net
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