Tragedy struck in Cameroon’s capital Yaounde when a landslide killed at least 11 people attending a funeral on Sunday.
Landslides occur relatively frequently in Cameroon, but they are rarely as deadly as Sunday’s incident in Yaounde.
Recall that forty-three people were killed in the western city of Bafoussam in 2019, when a landslide triggered by heavy rains swept away a dozen precarious dwellings built on the side of a hill.
According to reports, the victims had gathered at the top of a hill for a memorial service for five people when the ground collapsed under part of the audience.
The disaster took place in Yaounde’s working-class district of Damas, on its eastern outskirts.
Four large white tents were on the hill’s summit, at the edge of what seemed to be a ridge, beyond which the ground had disappeared.
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“Some were sitting in a tent where there was a landslide early this evening,” Paul Bea, governor of the Centre region that includes Yaounde, told the media, adding that rescue efforts were ongoing.
However, a rescue worker who spoke with the media said tjay the search had been suspended late Sunday evening before a planned resumption on Monday morning.
Marie Claire Mendouga, who was an attendee at the ceremony but whose tent was not affected by the landslide said they had just started to dance when the incident happened.
“I went to dig with my hands” to try to get people out from under the earth, and was still covered in the brown clay from the site” she said.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.,
