And in Jiangxi province, five died from buildings collapsing, two in mudslides and one by a lightning strike, it said. In July last year a single mudslide triggered by days of heavy rain killed at least 14 people in two villages in the southwestern province of Yunnan.
Synonyms of group: crowd, company, party, band, troop | Collins English Thesaurus
It is true that everybody and everyone refers to everybody and everyone in a group of people and everything refers to everything in a group of things. Even so, they are still perceived individually or as a totality, so the singular verb form is still maintained: