Scramble to send aid after Ethiopia landslide kills over 200

Ethiopia landslides: Humanitarian agencies rush aid to southern Ethiopia after deadly landslide kills over 200 people, sparking desperate rescue efforts.

Humanitarian agencies were scrambling on July 23 to send desperately needed aid to a remote area of southern Ethiopia where a landslide has killed more than 200 people in the deadliest such disaster recorded in the Horn of Africa nation.

Crowds gathered at the site of the tragedy in an isolated and mountainous area of South Ethiopia regional state as residents used shovels or their bare hands to dig through mounds of red dirt in the hunt for victims and survivors, according to images posted by the local authority.

So far, 148 men and 81 women are confirmed to have died after the disaster struck on Monday in the Kencho-Shacha locality in the Gofa Zone, the local Communications Affairs Department said.

Images published on social media by the Gofa authority showed residents carrying bodies on makeshift stretchers, some wrapped in plastic sheeting.

Five people had been pulled alive from the mud and were receiving treatment at medical facilities, the government-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier.

It quoted local administrator Dagemawi Ayele as saying that most of the victims were buried after they went to help local residents hit by a first landslide following heavy rains.

Dagemawi said that among the victims were the locality's administrator as well as teachers, health professionals and agricultural professionals.