Ethiopia Declares Three-Day Mourning As Landslide Kills 250 Persons
Ethiopia on Friday declared three days of mourning after a devastating landslide in a southern remote part of the country claimed the lives of over 250 people.
Rescuers are continuing the grim search for bodies in the tiny locality of Kencho Shacha Gozdi, while distraught survivors bury those who perished in the disaster, the deadliest landslide on record in the Horn of Africa nation.
UN humanitarian agency OCHA, citing local authorities, said on Thursday that 257 people have died and warned the toll could reach 500.
“The House of Peoples’ Representatives has announced a three-day national mourning for the people who lost their lives in the landslide accident,” Ethiopia’s parliament said, adding that it would start on Saturday.
The period of remembrance would allow “comfort to their relatives and all the people of our country,” added the statement, shared by the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.
The Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission said earlier Friday that humanitarian aid and rehabilitation were “well underway” in the region.
It said a “structure for emergency disaster response coordination and integration” had been established, putting the number of people needing to be relocated at 6,000.
OCHA had said more than 15,000 people needed to be evacuated because of the risk of further landslides, including small children and thousands of pregnant women or new mothers.
Aid had begun arriving, it said, including four trucks from the Ethiopian Red Cross Society.
Officials said most of the victims were buried when they rushed to help after the first landslide, which followed heavy rains Sunday in the area that lies about 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.
International offers of condolences have flooded in, including from the African Union, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and World Health
Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is Ethiopian.
Africa’s second most populous nation is often afflicted by climate-related disasters and more than 21 million people or about 18 percent of the population rely on humanitarian aid as a result of conflict, flooding, or drought.
