By Frank Kamuntu
At least 21 people have died in a landslide at a vast rubbish dump in Uganda’s capital Kampala, the Red Cross said, with rescuers continuing to dig for survivors.
A chunk of garbage from the city’s only landfill site broke off on Friday evening following torrential rain in recent weeks, crushing and burying homes on the edge of the site as residents slept.
On Saturday, the Kampala Capital City Authority had put the death toll at eight, but that number was revised upward after the discovery of several more bodies on Sunday.
At least two of the dead were children, the authority said.
Fourteen people have also been rescued so far, but rainfall is slowing the efforts of rescue teams to find more survivors.
Tents have been set up nearby for those displaced by the landslide, according to the Red Cross.
The landfill site, known as Kiteezi, has served as Kampala’s sole rubbish dump for decades.
Situated on a steep slope in an impoverished part of the city, it is frequented by women and children who scavenge plastic waste for income, and some homes have been built at the site’s edge.
Residents have long complained of hazardous waste polluting the environment and posing a danger to residents.
Kampala authorities for years have considered closing the site and commissioning a larger area outside the city as an alternate waste disposal site.
However, no progress has been made on the plan since 2016.
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered an investigation into the landslide, asking in a series of posts on X why people were living in close proximity to the landfill.
“Who allowed people to live near such a potentially hazardous and dangerous heap?” Mr Museveni said, adding that effluent from the site is hazardous enough that people should not be living there.
There have been similar tragedies elsewhere in Africa from poorly managed mountains of municipal garbage.
In 2017, at least 115 people were killed in Ethiopia, crushed by a landslide at a garbage dump in Addis Ababa.
In Mozambique, at least 17 people died in a similar disaster in Maputo the following year.
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