A UN official said over 670 people are believed to have died in a huge landslide in a distant part of northern Papua New Guinea. Rescue teams are working hard to find any survivors.
Yambali village has been hit hard, with more than 150 houses buried under rubble, according to Serhan Aktoprak, the Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in the country.
This new estimate is much higher than the earlier one from the UN, which initially thought over 100 people had died.
At first, it was thought that the village had around 4,000 people, but later it was discovered that there were even more residents, Aktoprak explained.
Over 250 houses have been cleared, and around 1,250 people have had to leave their homes. Many of them are staying with family and friends nearby for now, the official said.
Aktoprak mentioned that the area is still very dangerous because rocks keep falling and the soil is under a lot of pressure. People are using sticks, shovels, and farming tools to dig out bodies buried in the ground.
The disaster happened in the remote village of Kaokalam, about 600 kilometers away from the capital city, Port Moresby, around 3 a.m. on Friday. It left behind a huge area covered in debris, about as big as four football fields, according to humanitarian workers.
Footage from AFP showed a large area of mud and rocks on a steep mountainside, with locals searching for survivors.
Papua New Guinea, a country in the Pacific, has around 10 million people. It’s rich in resources but its economy isn’t as strong as its neighbors’. It also has a high crime rate.
The country has many tribes living in remote areas that are hard to reach. Because of this, it’s difficult and expensive to improve basic services like water, electricity, and sanitation.