Multiple dead after landslide in Cameroon
Issued on: 27/11/2022 – 22:12
Une vue de la capitale camerounaise Yaoundé, ici le 1er octobre 2018 (image d’illustration)
Une vue de la capitale camerounaise Yaoundé, ici le 1er octobre 2018 (image d’illustration) © Marco Longari, AFP
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NEWS WIRES
1 min
A landslide in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde on Sunday killed at least 11 people gathered to mourn the deaths of several relatives, the regional governor told state broadcaster CRTV.
“The search is continuing to find other bodies under the earth,” Naseri Paul Bea, governor of the Centre region that includes Yaounde, told CRTV radio.
The people had gathered to mourn members of their families who had died, governor Bea told CRTV.
Early Sunday evening, police pick-up tracks were taking away bodies covered by white sheets, an AFP correspondent at the scene reported.
Emergency services were trying to make their way to the site, as hundreds of local people frantically searched for loved ones. Some people in the crowd wept as emergency workers searched the site.
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The disaster happened in the working-class district of Damas, on the eastern outskirts of the capital.
Residents told AFP that several families were had gathered under large tents on waste ground at the top of a hill, when part of the ground beneath them gave way.
An AFP correspondent saw four large white tents at the hill’s summit, on the edge of what seemed to be a ridge, beyond which the ground had disappeared.
A police cordon prevented journalists from getting closer to the scene of the disaster.
(AFP)
