Over 670 people died in massive Papua New Guinea landslide, UN estimates as survivors seek safety

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The International Organization for Migration on Sunday increased its estimate of the death toll from a massive landslide in Papua New Guinea to more than 670 as emergency responders and traumatised relatives gave up hope that any survivors will now be found.

Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the UN migration agency's mission in the South Pacific island nation, said the revised death toll was based on calculations by Yambali village and Enga provincial officials that more than 150 homes had been buried by Friday's landslide.

The previous estimate had been 60 homes.

“They are estimating that more than 670 people (are) under the soil at the moment,” Aktoprak told The Associated Press.

Local officials had initially put the death toll on Friday at 100 or more. Only five bodies and a leg of a sixth victim had been recovered by Sunday, when an excavator donated by a local builder became the first piece of mechanical earth-moving equipment to join the recovery effort.

Relief crews were moving survivors to safer ground on Sunday as tons of unstable earth and tribal warfare, which is rife in the Papua New Guinea Highlands, threatened the rescue effort.

Around 250 additional houses have been condemned since the landslide because of still-shifting ground, leaving an estimated 1,250 people homeless, officials said.

The national government meanwhile is considering whether it needs to officially request more international support.

Crews have given up hope of finding survivors under earth and rubble 6 to 8 metres (20 to 26 feet) deep.

“People are coming to terms with this so there is a serious level of grieving and mourning,” Aktoprak said.

He said the new estimated death toll was “not solid” because it was based on the average size of the region's families per household. He would not speculate on the possibility that the actual toll could be higher.

Government authorities were establishing evacuation centres on safer ground on either side of the massive swath of debris that covers an area the size of three to four football fields and has cut the main highway through the province.

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