(VOVWORLD) - More than 300 people and over 1,100 houses were buried by a massive landslide that levelled a remote village in northern Papua New Guinea, local media reported on Saturday.
 View of the damage after a landslide in Maip Mulitaka, Enga province, Papua New Guinea, May 24, 2024 in this obtained image. (Photo: Emmanuel Eralia/Reuters) |
Hundreds are feared dead in the landslide that hit Kaokalam village in Enga Province, about 600 km northwest of capital Port Moresby, around 3 am on Friday.
The Australian Broadcasting Corp reported on Saturday that four bodies had been retrieved from the area after emergency teams reached the sparsely populated area, where the death toll is expected to rise.
“The land still continues sliding, therefore it makes it very difficult to operate on,” said Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea, adding that “there are a lot of houses under the debris that cannot be reached.”
Sitting just south of the equator, the area gets frequent heavy rains. In March, at least 23 people were killed by a landslide in a nearby province.