Guinea landfill collapse kills at least 30 people

A towering mound of rubbish collapsed onto homes and shacks in Guinea’s capital, Conakry, after heavy overnight rain, killing at least 30 people and injuring 22 others, the government said.

The disaster struck in the Dar-es-Salam area near the city’s largest landfill. The BBC reported that the collapse happened at about 02:00 local time, while Al Jazeera reported it occurred around 3 a.m. on Sunday. Six of the injured were in serious condition.

The government said “significant” resources and personnel, including the military, had been deployed to search for survivors, rescue victims and recover bodies. Excavators were seen digging through a mountain of scattered waste as residents gathered nearby, watching the search operation.

“Significant material and human resources have been deployed to search for any people who may still be buried, to rescue the victims and to recover the bodies,” the government said in a statement cited by Al Jazeera.

Prime Minister Mamadou Oury Bah, also identified by Al Jazeera as Amadou Oury Bah, visited the scene to assess the situation and oversee the response. The government said measures had been taken “to ensure medical care for the wounded” and provide “assistance for those affected by this tragedy.”

Local officials and residents feared the toll could rise. Lancine Sylla, the head of the Dar-es-Salam suburb, told the AFP news agency before the government announced the full death toll that rescuers had already recovered many bodies.

“We have pulled out 18 bodies that were taken to the morgue,” Sylla said.

One woman told local media that her five children had died in the collapse, the BBC reported.

The landslide was triggered after heavy rains washed over the landfill, burying nearby shacks, according to Al Jazeera. The same outlet reported that the site had been designated for closure on Sunday, citing Lieutenant Colonel Balde Mamadou Bailo, a sanitation officer for the Military Engineering Battalion.

Former Prime Minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, a leading opposition figure who is in exile, called the disaster “a tragedy that plunges us into dismay” in a Facebook post.

“This tragedy is all the more worrying because the closure of the dump had been announced for this Sunday, August 23,” Diallo wrote, according to Al Jazeera. “It is now up to the competent authorities to establish, with full transparency, the circumstances that led to this disaster and to draw all the necessary conclusions.”

The government recently ordered the expulsion of people living near the landfill and called for safety measures around the site because of fears of collapses, Al Jazeera reported.

The Dar-es-Salam landfill has been deadly before. Another landslide at the same site killed 10 people in 2017, according to the BBC.