Survivors of huge landslide moved to safety

Clear the way: An injured person being carried on a stretcher after the landslide in Yambali village, Enga province. ­— AP

EMERGENCY responders here were moving survivors of a massive landslide – feared to have buried scores of people – to safer ground as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the country’s Highlands, threatened the rescue effort.

Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble six to eight metres deep after a landslide wiped out part of Yambali village a few hours before dawn on Friday, said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in Papua New Guinea.