World

Bodies of final Indonesia landslide victims recovered

By AAP Newswire

Apr 16, 2024

Indonesia Landslide — Rescuers have recovered the final bodies of the victims of a landslide Sulawesi, Indonesia. -AP

Rescuers have recovered the bodies of a three-year-old girl and her mother who were the last victims still missing after landslides on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island that killed 20 people.

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Both of them were found close to each other, local rescue chief Mexianus Bekabel said on Tuesday.

Mud loosened by torrential rain poured from surrounding hills onto four houses on Saturday at South Makale village in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province, said local police chief Gunardi Mundu.

He said a family gathering was being held in one of the houses when the landslide hit.

Fog and rain had hampered the search for the victims.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers had joined the search in the remote hillside villages of Makale and South Makale, Mundu said.

Rescuers early on Sunday managed to pull out two injured people, including an eight-year-old girl, and rushed them to a hospital.

Tana Toraja has many popular tourist attractions, including traditional houses and wooden statues of bodies buried in caves, known as tau-tau.

Seasonal downpours cause frequent landslides and floods in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or fertile flood plains.