“Nine people were rescued, three are dead and it is estimated that more than 20 people are missing. This is a tragedy,” President Gustavos Petros said via Twitter.
At least three people have been killed and at least 20 buried in a landslide in northwestern Colombia, where an operation to rescue survivors is underway, authorities said.
“Nine people were rescued, three are dead and it is estimated that more than 20 people are missing. This is a tragedy,” President Gustavos Petros said via Twitter.
The landslide hit an isolated, mountainous area in the municipality of Pueblo Rico, according to Civil Protection.
Dozens of rescue team members are looking for the occupants of a motorcycle and a bus, who were crushed when the landslide occurred.
Among the victims is “a minor who, after being rescued, was taken to the hospital in Pueblo Rico” but “died before the ambulance even got there,” Civil Protection spokesman Alexander Mendes told Noticias Caracol news.
The little girl was 7 years old, according to authorities.
The bus had left the city of Cali (southwest) in the early hours of the morning and had traveled some 270 kilometers when it overturned along the western Andes mountain range, heading in the direction of Kibdo (northwest), according to the Civil Protection.
According to survivor testimony, the bus driver saw the hill he was heading towards collapse.
“Section (of the hill) collapsed and the bus was a little further back. The bus driver was reversing when everything collapsed,” Andrés Ibarguen, who was taken away from the area in an ambulance, told Lloró Stéreo radio station.
Since early August, the country has been in a state of “national disaster” due to the worst rainy season in forty years, according to the government.
Rainfall, landslides and floods killed 271 people and affected another 700,000 last year.
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