(Kencho Shacha Gozdi) Ethiopia has declared three days of national mourning starting Saturday after the Kencho Shacha Gozdi disaster, where a landslide following heavy rains killed at least 257 people in a remote area in the south of the country.
On the ground, as help begins to arrive, searches continue to try to find the bodies swallowed up by torrents of red clay last Monday, while distraught survivors bury their loved ones killed in the disaster.
It is the deadliest landslide ever recorded in this country in the Horn of Africa, with a death toll that rose to at least 257 on Thursday according to the UN humanitarian agency (OCHA), citing local authorities, but likely to climb to 500 deaths, according to the same source.
“The House of People’s Representatives has announced a three-day national mourning for those who lost their lives in the landslide,” the Ethiopian parliament announced.
This will “comfort the relatives and all the people of our country,” he added in a statement broadcast by Ethiopian radio and television.
PHOTO MICHELE SPATARI, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A relative of a victim bursts into tears as others move the body of Beynech Belay, July 26 in Kencho Shacha Gozdi.
On the ground, humanitarian aid and reconstruction “are well underway”, said the Ethiopian agency responsible for protection, and a structure for coordinating relief has been set up, and 6,000 people are to be rehoused.
“I found my wife’s body!”
A few kilometres from the hill that literally collapsed on the villagers, families in dismay wash the bodies of their loved ones who were slain, pulled from mounds of earth, before wrapping them in shrouds for burial.
“My heart is overjoyed because I found my wife’s body,” Ketema Kelsaye, 32, told AFP, his clothes and hands covered in mud. “I cried and searched for five days with a shovel and bare hands in the mud but I found nothing. Burying her properly is a real relief in my grief.”
According to OCHA, more than 15,000 people are being evacuated due to the risk of further landslides, including young children and thousands of pregnant women and new mothers. Aid has started arriving, it said, including four trucks from the Ethiopian Red Cross.
Most of the victims were buried when they rushed to rescue and help after a first landslide following heavy rains on Sunday in the region located about 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.
“The bodies found on the first day were easily identifiable because they were intact,” Iyasu Zumayunga, 40, told AFP. “After we extracted them, we washed their faces and then asked the families to identify them.”
Messages of condolence have poured in, including from the African Union, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, himself Ethiopian.
Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Africa and often hit by climate-related disasters.
More than 21 million people, or about 18% of the population, are normally dependent on humanitarian aid due to conflict, floods or droughts.