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28 feared dead in Indonesia landslide

Indonesian rescuers use a sniffer dog to search for survivors after a wall of mud slammed onto houses from a hillside in Ponorogo district, East Java, Indonesia, April 2, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Indonesian rescuers, joined by police and soldiers, found one body and continued to look for 28 other people feared to be buried after a landslide triggered by heavy rain on Indonesia’s Java Island, a spokesman for the national disaster agency said.

The mud and debris from the Saturday landslide in a village in the Ponorogo area of East Java had engulfed more than 20 houses after sliding 800 meters down a hillside, National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.

Some of the victims were believed to be members of a group harvesting ginger crops in fields around the village, he said.

Seventeen people were injured and were being treated at a community health center.

Rescue efforts were hampered by people flocking to the area to see the landslide and causing traffic jams, he said earlier.

The local disaster mitigation agency had warned of the risk of a landslide due to recent rain, and some people had only returned to the village on Saturday after staying the night in a shelter, said the official.

(Source: Reuters)


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