At Least 11 Killed in Landslides In Cameroon

Mudslides in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé killed at least 11 people while attending a funeral on Sunday, local officials told state media.

As the victims gathered on a hill for a memorial service for the five, the ground collapsed under some of the audience.

“Some people were sitting in tents tonight where there was a landslide,” Paul Bee, governor of Yaoundé’s Center region, told state radio. He added that rescue efforts are underway.

Rescue workers at the scene told AFP news agency that the search was suspended late Sunday night before it was scheduled to resume Monday morning. Marie Claire Mendouga, 50, attended the ceremony but her tent was unaffected by the landslide.

“We had just started dancing when the floor collapsed,” she told AFP.

She said she “dug by hand” to try and get people out of the ground, but they were still covered in brown clay from the site.
The disaster occurred in the working-class district of Damas, on the eastern outskirts of the city of Yaounde.

At the edge of a ridge at the top of the hill he stood four large white tents, an AFP correspondent who was there said. A police pickup truck pulled the body covered in white sheets early Sunday evening.

A police cordon prevented journalists from approaching the crime scene.

Emergency services struggled to find their way to the site as hundreds of people desperately searched for their loved ones. Some of the crowd cried as rescuers searched the area.

at 10 o’clock: (2100 GMT) The search has been called off. A member of the emergency services, who requested anonymity, said the death toll stood at 11 and the search for more victims continued on Monday morning.

Tears were streaming down the crowd behind the security chain.

“I’m not sure if I’ll be able to sleep,” Mendouga said.

“You are sitting down, you have people behind you and afterwards, they’re dead.”

Landslides occur relatively frequently in Cameroon, but they are rarely as deadly as Sunday’s incident in Yaounde.

Forty-three people were killed in the western city of Bafoussam in 2019, when a landslide triggered by heavy rains swept away a dozen precarious dwellings built on the side of a hill.