A massive landslide has struck a remote village in Papua New Guinea and is expected to have killed hundreds of people, local officials and aid agencies said.
At around 03:00 local time on Friday (17:00 GMT on Thursday), a landslide occurred in the highlands north of the southwestern Pacific island nation of Enga, burying more than 100 houses.
It was unclear how many people were trapped in the rubble.
Enga governor Peter Ipatas told AFP it was an “unprecedented natural disaster”.
Community leader Andrew Ruing told Reuters people were sleeping when the landslide occurred. “More than 300 lives have been lost to debris and rocks,” he said.
“Food, gardens, people, millions of dollars worth of property are all covered in these things,” he added.
“The whole village is paralyzed,” business leader Elizabeth Iarume told the ABC.
Villager Ninga Rohr also said he believed hundreds of people had died. He said the scale of the landslide also made it difficult to rescue survivors.
“The area covered by the landslide was huge and full of rocks and trees,” Rohrer told Reuters by phone. “It was very difficult to get them out.”
“While the area is not densely populated, we are concerned the death toll may be disproportionately high,” humanitarian organization Cares Australia said in a statement.
Clearing roads will take a long time, “which will hinder assessment and rescue efforts,” the report said.
Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape said disaster relief officials had been sent to the scene “to begin rescue operations, recover bodies and rebuild infrastructure.”
Video shows villagers crawling over rocks in search of the buried victims.
Facebook user Kindupan Kambii from Kaokalam village in Enga posted a video in which people can be heard crying and shouting.
The Papua New Guinea Red Cross said an emergency team consisting of officials from the governor’s office, police, defense forces and local non-governmental organizations was deployed to the scene.
Enga is more than 600 kilometers (372 miles) from the country’s capital, Port Moresby.
