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Summary
A landslide in eastern Uganda has killed at least 80 people and villagers are digging with bare hands and simple tools in the hope of finding survivors, a government minister and Ugandan media said on Tuesday.Ugandan media said the landslide engulfed a village in the eastern Bududa district on the foothills of Mt Elgon on Monday night after a seven-hour downpour. Tarsis Kabwegyere, Minister for Disaster Preparedness and Refugees, put the death toll at around 80 people with up to 300 feared buried. He also expected rains to intensify in the region. The local tv channel showed mud and wattle houses flattened by viscous earth and wailing villagers piling bodies on a grassy compound. Kabwegyere said a government response team was on the ground with food and the Red Cross had sent doctors. Police and volunteers were also helping in the rescue. Parts of Uganda and neighbouring Kenya have had sustained rain for much of the past two months, which is usually a dry period between rainy seasons. Local MP David Wakikoona told that the villagers had told him about 100 to 150 people were at a trading centre when huge rocks slid down the hillsides, transported by mud. Only eight people were known to have survived so far, he said. They periodically scrambled to safer ground, fearing more mudslides, when rumbling was heard from the top of the hills. In the eastern Bududa landslide, a health centre was buried along with a nurse and three support staff, he told parliament. He said three villages with more than 3,000 residents were badly hit. The hamlets cling to isolated mountainsides with no proper road access, making rescue efforts difficult. Nearly 24 hours after the tragedy, earth movers and other equipment that could bolster rescue efforts were unable to reach the area, he said.
