The national disaster centre in Papua New Guinea has disclosed that more than 2000 people were buried alive in a massive landslide on Friday.
DAILY POST reports that Papua New Guinea is an island nation in Oceania, which lies in the south-western Pacific and includes the eastern half of New Guinea and several offshore islands.
The landslide crashed through Yambali village around 3am on Friday while most of the community was asleep, leaving no fewer than 150 reportedly buried beneath debris almost two stories high.
Survivors rummaged through tonnes of earth and rubble for missing relatives, as a first emergency convoy delivered food and other supplies on Saturday.
In a letter to the UN released on Monday, Luseta Laso Mana, acting director of the agency, said the landslide “buried more than 2,000 people alive” and caused “major destruction” at Yambali village in the Enga province.
The UN International Organisation for Migration, IOM, had estimated that 670 people had been killed as of Sunday morning.
Heavy equipment and aid have been slow to arrive due to difficulty in reaching the location.
Papua New Guinea has a population of around 10 million people, and sits on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ — the arc of seismic faults where much of the world’s volcanic activity occurs.
It is the most populous South Pacific nation after Australia.
