Fear of over 670 fatalities in Papua New Guinea
On the night of Friday to Saturday, a portion of a mountain in the secluded highlands of Papua New Guinea crumbled. Emergency crews supplied the locals with medicines and food. It's now anticipated that several hundreds of people didn't make it through.
The heart-rending landslide in the secluded highlands of Papua New Guinea is thought to have taken more lives than initially suspected. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has revised its estimate of the number of fatalities upward to over 670.
Serhan Aktoprak, the head of the IOM mission in the South Pacific island state, stated that the updated figure is based on revised calculations in the impacted village of Yambali and from provincial representatives of Enga, who claim that more than 150 houses were entombed by the accident on Friday. Originally, authorities thought approximately 60 houses had been impacted.
"More than 670 individuals are presently believed to be buried underneath the earth," Aktoprak remarked. Local officials initially reported that the casualties on Friday exceeded one hundred. By Sunday, only five corpses and the leg of a sixth casualty had been retrieved from the landslide.
Numerous locations in the province of Enga faced destruction when a piece of a mountain fell down around 3 a.m. on Friday morning (local time). Official death tolls haven't been made public yet. Regional emergency teams were en route to the catastrophe site to give locals medication and sustenance.
"Beneath the debris are several houses that can't be accessed," Aktoprak remarked on Saturday. The earth and rock masses are up to eight meters deep in some locations and are still shifting in certain areas, making the search and rescue efforts for the rescue squads "perilous."
Papua New Guinea, located in the southwestern Pacific, is frequently subjected to heavy rainfall. This year, there have already been severe rainstorms and floods. In March, at least 23 individuals perished in a landslide in a neighboring province.
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The International Organization for Migration (IOM) has reported an increase in the estimated number of fatalities from the landslide in Papua New Guinea, now surpassing 670. This tragedy is just one of the natural disasters that International communities need to address, given Papua New Guinea's vulnerability to such events due to its location and frequent heavy rainfall.
Source: www.ntv.de
