Rescuers looking for dozens of others reported lacking after landslide in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.
A landslide throughout a funeral ceremony in Cameroon’s capital has killed not less than 14 folks, the regional governor stated, as rescuers continued the seek for dozens of others who stay lacking.
The catastrophe occurred on Sunday as folks gathered at a soccer pitch on the base of a 20-metre excessive soil embankment in Yaounde.
Witnesses advised Reuters information company that the embankment collapsed on prime of dozens of individuals.
“On the scene we counted 10 our bodies, however earlier than our arrival 4 our bodies already had been taken away,” stated Paul Bea, the governor of the Centre area that features Yaounde.
“There are additionally a dozen critical instances dispersed in hospitals,” he stated.
The governor described the world the place the landslide passed off as a “very harmful spot” and inspired folks to keep away from the Damas district in Yaounde’s japanese outskirts.
Amongst those that survived was 50-year-old Marie Claire Mendouga.
“We had simply began to bounce when the bottom collapsed,” she advised AFP.
She stated she “went to dig with my arms” to attempt to get folks out from below the earth, and was nonetheless lined within the brown clay from the location.
Landslides happen comparatively ceaselessly in Cameroon, however they’re hardly ever as lethal as Sunday’s incident in Yaounde.
Forty-three folks had been killed within the western metropolis of Bafoussam in 2019, when a landslide triggered by heavy rains swept away a dozen precarious dwellings constructed on the facet of a hill.