GRAPHIC WARNING: This post contains a graphic image that some viewers may find disturbing. 

Reuters

Xian Xiyong cries after his mother, Li Jie'e, jumped off a building and died at a demolition site in Yangji village in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, China on May 10, 2012.

AFP - Getty Images

Demolition workers look at a building being taken down in Yangji village on March 21, 2012, the same day that Li Jie'e's home was reportedly destroyed.

A Chinese woman leapt to her death on Thursday in apparent despair over the demolition of her home. Li Jie'e's house in Guangzhou had been knocked down on March 21, according to local media reports cited by Reuters. 

Li had been a resident of Yangji, a former village that has been swallowed up by the rapid expansion of Guangzhou, China's third-largest city with a population of over 12 million. In March, PhotoBlog reported on the desperate protests of another Yangji woman whose home had been destroyed to make way for new developments.

Hundreds of miles away in the city of Zhaotong, meanwhile, another woman was reported to have blown herself up on Thursday in a protest over the demolition of her house. The blast at a local government office killed the woman and two others.

Disputes over land rights are the leading cause of surging unrest across China, according to a study cited by Bloomberg News.

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Reuters

Xian, center, the husband of Li Jie'e, accompanied by his son Xiyong, right, pushes his wife's body on a transport stretcher as another relative, left, burns incense in Yangji village on May 10, 2012.

Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

A man, whose home was demolished, visits the area on May 9 where 250 squatter homes were demolished, in Kathmandu.

Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

A woman holds a picture of her grandson recovered from her demolished house in Kathmandu May 9.

Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

A boy looks up while searches for his belongings in the rubble of his former house at the slum settlement in Kathmandu, May 9, 2012.

Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

An elderly woman searches for her belongings in the rubble where her house used to stand May 9 at the slum settlement near the bank of Bagmati River, a day after 250 squatter homes, built illegally, were demolished, in Kathmandu.

Navesh Chitrakar / Reuters

A demolished wall of a school is all that is left of the slum settlement near the bank of Bagmati River, in Kathmandu, May 9.

At least 1000 people living in a Kathmandu slum have become homeless and now are living in the park near the slum area. The demolition follows the government's decision to begin evicting nearly 10,000 people who've created squatter camps along the Bagmati river in the Nepali capital.

“I cried my heart out when I saw bulldozers demolishing our home,”34-year-old Manju Adhikari, a mother of daughters aged 15 and 17, told AFP.

“When my younger girl came back from school, she asked me where were we going to live. I didn’t have the answer. We have nowhere to go.”

Full story at Dawn.com

Photos from yesterday's riot, preceding the demolition on PhotoBlog.

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Narendra Shrestha / EPA

Landless people hurl stones towards riot police during a clash in Katmandu, Nepal, on May 8, 2012.

Riot police in Kathmandu arrested more than 20 protesters on Tuesday during clashes sparked by an attempt to evict landless squatters from their homes. Dozens were injured.  

The demolition drive follows a Nepali government decision to force the squatters out from an area beside the Thapathali hospital and move them to an alternative settlement along with the introduction of a property ownership document, according to local media reports.

-- Reuters and EPA contributed to this report

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Bikash Dware / Reuters

Police arrest landless squatters who live beside the Thapathali hospital during clashes with police personnel who arrived to demolish illegally-built houses in Kahmandu on May 8, 2012.

Bikash Dware / Reuters

A girl who used to live beside the Thapathali hospital cries during the clashes in Katmandu on May 8, 2012.

Reuters

Huang Sufang reacts as she sees a part of her house being taken down by demolition workers at Yangji village in central Guangzhou city, Guangdong province, China on March 21, 2012.

Huang Sufang, a resident of the Chinese city of Guangzhou, mounted a desperate last stand to protect her home as demolition workers moved in on Wednesday.

According to local media cited by Reuters, part of Huang's house was mistakenly demolished as workers were flattening another building nearby.

Hers was one of more than 1,000 homes in Yangji, a former village that has been swallowed up by the rapid expansion of Guangzhou, China's third-largest city with a population of over 12 million.

In 2010, China Daily reported that Yangji was one of 138 'urban villages' in Guangzhou earmarked for demolition to make way for new developments in the next decade.

Disputes over land rights are the leading cause of surging unrest across China, according to a study cited by Bloomberg News.

Reuters

Huang Sufang tries to attack a worker with a brick after a part of her house was demolished.

AFP - Getty Images

Huang Sufang attempting to protect her home as workers move in for demolition.

Reuters

A relative holds Huang Sufang as she wipes away tears.

AFP - Getty Images

Workers demolish a group of villagers' houses in Yangji village.

Reuters

Huang Sufang lies on the ground after a part of her house was demolished.

Cathal McNaughton / Reuters

Fencing placed in front of The Waterways, an empty and unsold housing development in the village of Keshcarrigan, County Leitrim, Ireland, on Jan. 28, 2012.

Reuters photographer Cathal McNaughton reports on the lasting effects of Ireland's financial crisis:

Cathal McNaughton / Reuters

An electrical cable is used to secure a security fence surrounding Cnoc an Iuir, an empty and unsold housing development in the village of Drumshanbo, County Leitrim.

"If you build it, they will come." The iconic quote from the film Field of Dreams seems like a rebuke to Ireland's misguided builders and planners as the depressing sight of rows of newly built empty houses – windows broken and doors flapping in the wind – stretch out in the distance.

I'd come to Co Leitrim, in the west of Ireland, to see for myself the so-called ghost housing estates that first came to the public's attention four years ago as the Celtic Tiger collapsed leaving thousands of developers bankrupt and projects half finished. Surely in four years, something would have been done about this national embarrassment – so obvious a sign of the demise of Ireland’s once envied economy?

 But the only solution that seems to have been put into action is fencing off the estates – hiding the embarrassing problem behind huge sheets of wood – leaving the houses to crumble into disrepair away from the gaze of despairing neighbours who paid full price for an identical house just 200 yards away.

Cathal McNaughton / Reuters

Unfinished houses at The Waterways, Keshcarrigan.

 Hardly a town or village in Leitrim – the least populated county in Ireland and the worst affected by the over-enthusiastic builders – has been untouched. Pretty lakeside villages with perhaps just 200 residents now have 50 empty 'dream homes' in new developments where fading advertising signs boast of private moorings and roof gardens. Larger market towns have row upon row of once smart new town houses – clearly built with the upwardly mobile commuters who were supposed to move to the countryside as part of the government's largely ignored decentralisation project – now with brambles growing over the gardens, potholed roads unfinished and adorned with graffiti by the kids who use them as drinking dens.

• For Sale: Deserted French village, pool included

Cathal McNaughton / Reuters

Fenced-off houses at The Waterways, Keshcarrigan.

Impressive holiday homes with 'stunning sea views' lie vacant with at most one unlucky tenant sharing their ghost street with long-abandoned builder's rubble and broken advertising signs banging in the wind at night keeping them awake.

Surprisingly many of the houses aren't even for sale any more – even if a buyer could be found in the precarious Irish financial market.

• Ireland to hold referendum on EU fiscal treaty

One resident – the sole home owner in a once stunning lakeside development – explained. "These were all sold but the developer needed more money from the bank to finish it and they refused. He went bust and that was that."

See more images on the Reuters Photographers Blog.

Cathal McNaughton / Reuters

The ironically-named Crest Of A Wave, an empty and unsold housing development in the village of Bundoran, County Donegal.

Sarah DiLorenzo / AP

The village of Saint Nicolas Courbefy, in Limousin, France, on Feb. 28, 2012. The entire hamlet was put up for sale with an asking price of just $400,000, the cost of a studio apartment in Paris.

Sarah DiLorenzo / AP

The village swimming pool could perhaps do with a spring clean.

The Associated Press reports from Courbefy, France — The village of Courbefy has rustic buildings with fireplaces and exposed beams, a horse stable, a tennis court and a swimming pool.

Sound nice? It's for sale.

The saga of the abandoned hamlet is a story of flight from rural France, bad economic times and real estate schemes gone awry. It's turned the mayor of the village next door into a minor celebrity whose office fields inquiries from places as far flung as Qatar and China.

The village in Limousin, about 280 miles southwest of Paris, was put on the block last week because its latest owners, who had run it as a luxury hotel and restaurant, had long stopped paying their mortgage.

The entire hamlet — with more than a dozen buildings — carried an asking price of just €300,000 ($400,000) — about the cost of a studio apartment in Paris.

Take an aerial tour of the village or continue reading the tale of its rise and fall.

Rolex Dela Pena / EPA

Residents of a shanty community resisting eviction throw rocks at police and a demolition crew in Corazon de Jesus district of San Juan City, east of Manila, Philippines, on Jan. 11, 2012.

Dondi Tawatao / Getty Images Contributor

A resident is collared by police during a violent demolition of homes in San Juan City on Jan. 11, 2012.

Dondi Tawatao / Getty Images Contributor

Residents barricade a street to prevent police and demolition teams from demolishing their homes in San Juan City on Jan. 11, 2012.

Scores of people were hurt and dozens arrested during the disputed demolition of homes in San Juan City, east of Manila, Getty Images reports.

The demolition was carried out to make way for an extension of a new City Hall building, local government officials said. Residents have been occupying the space without permission for close to four decades and have rejected the government's offer to relocate them outside Metro Manila, citing loss of livelihood and lack of running water in the relocation site. 

See more images related to housing issues on PhotoBlog.

Samrang Pring / Reuters

A riot police officer fires tear gas at residents during a forced eviction at the Borei Keila complex in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Jan. 3, 2012.

Mak Remissa / EPA

A resident looks at her destroyed house at a squatter area in Phnom Penh on Jan. 3, 2012. More than 200 houses were demolished.

Reuters reports:

Cambodian human rights group Licadho said that police officers and residents were injured in a face-off when hundreds of armed authorities tried to evict families from their homes in Borei Keila, Phnom Penh, as part of a long running dispute with a local real estate firm well-connected with the government.

The firm, Phanimex, plans to convert the residential complex into a commercial building. Licadho said that at least 12 people had also been detained following the violent clashes. 

Samrang Pring / Reuters

A riot police officer throws stones at residents during clashes that erupted in the midst of a forced eviction at the Borei Keila complex on Jan. 3, 2012.

Samrang Pring / Reuters

A woman cries as an excavator demolishes her home during a forced eviction at the Borei Keila complex on Jan. 3, 2012.

The Phnom Penh Post has more on the background to the dispute:

In 2003, Phan Imex Company signed an agreement with the government to construct 10 six-floor buildings on two hectares of land to house 1,776 displaced families, in exchange for the right to develop the remaining 2.6 hectares.

The company has constructed only eight buildings, leaving nearly 400 families without housing. Read the full story.

James MacPherson / AP

Alton and Mary Lou Sundby rest during a move into a new apartment in Williston, N.D. on Oct. 27, 2011. The Sundby's were notified last month that their rent would nearly triple to $2,000 a month.

In a previous PhotoBlog post I showed how “man camps” are springing up in the North Dakota oil fields to deal with the housing shortage caused by an oil boom near Williston, N.D. The oil is suddenly available because of a new drilling technology known as “fracking” that frees formerly unreachable oil and natural gas.

However, in a cruel twist of unintended consequences, the same booming developments that have made North Dakota virtually immune to the Great Recession has forced many longtime residents to abandon their homes because of higher rent, including seniors who carved towns like Williston out of the unforgiving prairie long before oil money arrived.

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Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images

A woman helplessly watches as her home is demolished in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Oct. 27.

Orlando Sierra / AFP - Getty Images

A woman cries in front of a police officer as her shack is dismantled in Tegucigalpa on Oct. 27.

Agence France Presse reports: 

Human rights organizations described as inhumane the eviction of 120 families and the destruction by court order of 52 houses on El Estiquin hill, on the southern outskirts of the Honduran capital. The evicted people, mostly low-income single mothers, demanded that President Porfirio Lobo provide them with a decent place to live.