Rescuers scrambled through a landslide which devastated a village in Myanmar’s south at the weekend, a team leader said, searching for more casualties in a disaster that has already claimed nine lives.
Myanmar’s southernmost Tanintharyi region was lashed by intense rains last weekend, a wave of extreme weather that also battered neighbouring Thailand and inundated Bangkok.
Flash floods, cut roads and severed communications lines have complicated rescue and recovery efforts in the country.
Myo Min, chairman of the volunteer Dawei Zabuthiri Emergency Medical Service, said nine bodies had been recovered yesterday from a landslide that hit Ka Det Nge Htein village on Saturday night.
Eight more people remain missing under the mud in the village in Launglon township 4km from the Andaman Sea coastline, according to Myo Min.
“The situation was terrible,” he said.
“They died after being buried by the landslide as they slept.”
“It was impossible for the villagers to escape,” he added.
Rescuers across the region have reported many other landslides and floods, although no official overall casualty toll has been announced in the war-split area.
Control of Tanintharyi is fractured between the military – which triggered civil war by launching a coup five years ago –and dozens of ethnic minority and pro-democracy rebel groups. — AFP
