Ethiopia declares three days of mourning after devastating landslide
Ethiopia declared three days of national mourning, starting Saturday after the Kencho Shacha Gozdi disaster, where a landslide following heavy rains left at least 257 dead in a remote area south of the country, making it the deadliest landslide ever recorded.
“The House of People’s Representatives announced a three-day national mourning for those who lost their lives in the landslide,” the Ethiopian Parliament announced.
Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), has lead a team of UN agencies on the ground to assess the impact of landslides and expecting the death toll to rise up to 500 deaths. Additionally, OCHA work to povide aid supplies including shelter, nutrition, water, sanitation and hygiene.
The Ethiopian government is working to evacuate more than 5,600 of the most vulnerable people, including more than 1,300 children and more than 400 pregnant or breastfeeding women, to safer areas.
As help begins to arrive, searches continue to find the corpses submerged under torrents of red clay, while distraught survivors are trying to pull themselves together to bury their beloved ones.
