100 buried after a landslide in New Guinea

A landslide struck a village in Papua New Guinea’s highlands. Pic/AP

An emergency convoy was delivering food, water, and other provisions on Saturday to stunned survivors of a landslide that devastated a remote village in the mountains of Papua New Guinea and was feared to have buried scores of people, officials said.

An assessment team reported that about 100 people were dead and 60 houses were buried by the mountainside that collapsed in the Enga province, a few hours before dawn on Friday, said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the International Organisation for Migration's mission in the South Pacific island nation.

Aktoprak conceded that if the number of buried houses estimated by local authorities was correct, the death toll could be higher. "If 60 houses had been destroyed, then the number of casualties would definitely be much higher than the 100," Aktropak said. Only three bodies had been recovered by early Saturday from the vast swathes of earth, boulders, and splintered trees in Yambali, a village of nearly 4,000 people, and to the northwest of the capital, Port Moresby.

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