Toll reaches 149 in hills as rescuers spearhead salvage campaign

Rescuers today recovered 13 more bodies in the past few hours reaching the toll to 149 as salvage campaign was underway a day after torrential rains triggered a series of landslides in the southeastern hills.

"We have recorded 149 deaths as 13 more bodies were found afresh as the rescue campaign is underway as many are reported missing," a disaster management ministry spokesman told BSS.

Officer-In-Charge at the disaster management ministry control room Jalil Uddin said until this morning, the casualties were reported from Rangamati, Chittagong and Bandarban.

But, he said, the rescuers now found parts of Cox's Bazar and Khagrachhari also were ravaged by the disaster which killed three people in the last two districts.

Uddin, however, said of the casualties, 142 were killed in landslides while the rests were drowned or killed in lightening.

The highest number of deaths was reported from Rangamati where the landslide killed 104 people including four army personnel, two being commissioned officers.

The disaster claimed 29 lives in Chittagong, six in Bandarban, two in Cox's Bazar and one in Khagrachhari.

The disaster management officials earlier said over 4,000 people were moved to different government shelters as the landslides ravaged their homes or they were exposed to danger of fresh such mudslides.

Officials feared the death toll could rise as rescuers were reaching out remote parts of the region where telephone and transport links had been cut.

At least 20 consequent landslides turned the southeastern Rangamati hill district to be the worst victim of the current spate of disaster killing 98 people, four being army personnel who were on rescue operations.

Witnesses said the landslide pushed 15 army men down to around 30 feet, killing the four instantly while a military spokesman in Dhaka said an army major and a captain were among four of their dead personnel.

He said the troops were called out to remove landslide rubbles from Chittagong-Rangamati Highway.

"A fresh landslide at the scene buried the detachment killing the four while one soldier is still missing . . . ten personnel were wounded in the (fresh) landslide," he said.

Officials said many of the victims were from poor ethnic minority or tribal communities in the remote hill district of Rangamati where an overnight power blackout since Tuesday and its snapped road communications with rest of the country enhanced the miseries of the residents.

The incessant rains caused a water logging in a vast part of the port city and submerged a number of coastal villages apart from triggering the landslides.

Experts and environmentalists attributed the latest spell of landslides to illegal hill cuts exposing the sandy hills to quick erosion during protracted rains.

The three southeastern hill districts of Ragamati, Bandarban, and Khagrachhari of Chittagong Hill Tracts saw over 300mm of rainfalls in the 24 hours till Tuesday morning.

Source: bss