At least 146 dead in landslides in Gofa, Ethiopia, official says

Rescue teams have so far recovered the bodies of 146 people killed in two landslides in southern Ethiopia, a local official told the BBC.

The landslides occurred on Sunday evening and Monday morning following heavy rains in a remote mountainous region of the Gofa zone.

The local authority said the search for survivors was “continuing at full speed” but that the “death toll could still rise.”

The footage showed hundreds of people gathering at the scene of the accident and others digging in the dirt to search for people trapped underneath.

In the background you can see a partially collapsed hill, exposing a large patch of red earth.

Goza zone chief administrator Dagmawi Ayele told the BBC that the dead included both adults and children – 90 men and 46 women – while 10 people rescued alive were being treated in hospital.

Heavy rains caused a landslide on Sunday, and while police, teachers and residents of surrounding villages feverishly continued their search and rescue operations on Monday, a second landslide occurred, burying them too under mud, Mr Dagmawi said.

“We are still digging,” he told the BBC.

Gofa is part of the state of Southern Ethiopia and is located about 320 km southwest of the capital Addis Ababa.

Southern Ethiopia is one of the areas of the country that has been hit by particularly heavy rains and floods in recent months, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

But cases of landslides and floods have been occurring for some time. In May 2016, at least 50 people died in floods and landslides in the south of the country following heavy rainfall.

Floods can have many causes, but warming of the atmosphere due to climate change makes extreme rainfall more likely.

Since the beginning of the industrial age, the earth has already warmed by about 1.2 degrees Celsius, and temperatures will continue to rise unless governments around the world drastically reduce their emissions.