The death toll from last week's landslide at a massive garbage dump in the Ugandan capital has risen, with police also reporting dozens of missing people.
The landslide was caused by heavy rainfall that has caused flooding and inundation in recent weeks. On Friday evening, dozens of homes were hit by dirt and rubbish, burying sleeping people.
Ugandan police said Wednesday that the death toll had risen to 26. Thirty-nine people are missing, 35 of whom are local residents and four are garbage collectors. Police said that interviews with survivors have allowed them to more accurately estimate the number of missing people.
At least a thousand people were evacuated
After the landslide, the number of people forced to seek shelter in a makeshift Red Cross center rose to 175, local media outlet Nile Post reported. Immediately after the disaster, the spokesman for the capital's police, Patrick Onyango, said that at least a thousand people had to be evacuated.
Massive landslide at garbage dump in Uganda's capitalPAP/EPA/ISAAC KASAMANI
Residents near the dump, the only one serving Uganda’s capital Kampala, have long complained about the sanitary and physical hazards it poses. The dump had long been full, but more than 2,000 tons of waste were being added to it every day, according to Kampala Mayor Erias Lukwago. Kampala’s population, which in 1950 was less than 100,000, now stands at nearly 1.9 million.
Main image source: PAP/EPA/ISAAC KASAMANI