Landslide on Garbage Mountain Leaves 31 Dead

Thirty-one people were killed and scores were missing last night after a municipal rubbish dump collapsed following heavy rain, triggering a landslide on to two villages near the Indonesian city of Bandung.

Officials said up to 60 houses had been buried or damaged when a 7 metre high wall of mud and waste engulfed Cilumus and Pojok, about 100 miles south-east of the capital, Jakarta, at 3am yesterday.

"When we stopped searching for the day at about 6.30pm we had retrieved 31 bodies," said a police spokesman, Rachmat Sudanto. "About 40 have been pulled out alive and about 65 are still missing. We think they are buried under the mud."

Witnesses saw a huge fireball emerge from the dump, which experts believe was from a build-up of methane gas, then the earth shook. "The next thing we knew was all this mud and rubbish was falling on the houses," one man told local reporters. Hundreds of people lived around the dump, scavenging a living from what they could recycle. Many are thought to have been buried in their beds.

Hundreds of police and soldiers from a nearby special forces training camp rushed to the scene and started digging with their hands and shovels, fearing that heavy equipment might crush buried survivors. Bulldozers and excavators were brought in once a path had been cleared to the site.

Mr Sudanto said further heavy rain, which was forecast for last night, could cause collapses.