A landslide triggered by monsoon rains left at least 34 dead and dozens wounded in a village in eastern Burma, while more than 80 people are missing, according to a new report released Saturday.
Aerial footage filmed by AFP shows a hillside disemboweled by a mudslide spilled Friday morning on the village of Ye Pyar Kone, Mon State, located in the south of the country, carrying sixteen houses and a monastery.
House debris and overturned trucks
Rescuers worked all night trying to find survivors. Saturday morning, they evacuated several victims, loading the bodies covered with a blue plastic in the back of a truck.
The authorities are still without news of a hundred other villagers, out of the 169 inhabitants that usually counts the affected area. But some may have been absent at the time of the landslide. The images show the remains of blue roofs washed away by the mud, while at the bottom of the hill, debris of houses alongside overturned trucks, testifying to the strength of the torrent.
"I saw my house washed away by the mud"
Htay Htay Win, 32, is still without news of two of his daughters and five other members of his family. "I heard a huge din and turning, I saw my house washed away by the mud," she said.
Torrential downpours pushed the rivers out of their beds, and people living near the coast were warned of the risks of high tides.
In the village of Shwegyin, in the Bago region (south), only roofs of houses were rising above floodwaters of the Sittaung River while residents were trying to escape on foot or by boat.
According to the authorities, the floods have already forced at least 30,000 people to leave their homes, mainly in the Bago region and in the Mon and Karen states. Vietnam is also experiencing heavy rains this week, killing at least eight people in the country's mountainous center.