People gather at the scene of a landslide triggered by heavy rain that buried dozens of homes across several villages in Bulambuli district, Uganda November 29, 2024
Kampala, Dec 3 — The death toll from a landslide in Bulambuli district, Eastern Uganda has risen to 28 after two more bodies of three-year-old boys were pulled out from the mud.
The landslide last week, buried several villages with dozens of people still unaccounted for.
More than 100 people had been feared missing, with 17 dead after Wednesday’s landslide on the slopes of Mount Elgon, an extinct volcano on the border with Kenya, about 300 km (190 miles) east of the capital, Kampala.
More bodies have been retrieved since, including the two boys, police said in a statement on X late on Monday, but gave no further details.
Since October, unusually heavy rains have triggered widespread flooding and landslides in some areas of Uganda. The Uganda Red Cross has blamed the incident on climate change.
The area around the site of last week’s tragedy has experienced several deadly landslides, with one in 2010 killing at least 80 people.
Authorities’ past efforts to persuade residents of the areas most prone to such disasters to shift to safer ground have met little success as most of them are poor and lack the means to do so.
