By Enyichukwu Enemanna
No fewer than 23 people have been killed following a deadly landslide in Yaounde, the capital of Cameroon, firefighters said on Monday.
It has been blamed on frequent rains in Yaounde, where indiscriminate erection of houses are usually recorded on the city’s many hills.
The incident on Sunday happened in the district of Mbankolo, northwest of Yaounde, with a population of three million.
“Yesterday we pulled out 15 people who had died and this morning we have found eight. We are still looking,” the deputy commander fire service, David Petatoa Poufong told reporters.
Torrential rains caused a levee holding back an artificial lake sitting on higher ground to rupture, public broadcaster CRTV had stated.
Images broadcast on TV showed that the entire section of a hill had collapsed and what remained of houses apparently constructed are woods, dried earth bricks and metal sheeting, an AFP report says.
“There was a landslide after heavy rain. The water swept away everything in its path,” Daouda Ousmanou, a local administrative official announced on public radio.
In November, at least 15 people died when a landslide engulfed members of a funeral party in Yaounde’s working-class district of Damas, on its eastern outskirts.
