At least 16 people diedincluding a 5-year-old boy, and 17 others are missing after a landslide registered this Friday in a tourist camp in Malaysia, located on an ecological farm on the outskirts of the capital, Kuala Lumpur.
“Fifty-three victims escaped the landslide unharmed, while seven were injured. The search and rescue operation is ongoing,” the Malaysian National Disaster Management Agency detailed on Twitter.
The search and rescue teams, who went to the scene of the event at dawn on Friday, have managed to rescue 60 people so far, according to information from the public agency Bernama. According to the district police chief, suffian abdullahat the time of the incident, at 2:24 local time, a hundred people were spending the night in the campsite near the farm Father’s Organic.
Suffian said the victims had entered the area, a popular recreational spot for locals to pitch or rent tents, on Wednesday. More of 400 people, including sniffer dogs, participated in the search and rescue efforts.
The avalanche occurred next to a road at an estimated height of 30 meters and covered an area of about 1.2 hectares. Users on social networks published photos of rescuers trying to help the victims.
Some families with small children who were rescued took refuge in a nearby police station. Survivors reported hearing a loud crash before the ground collapsed.
Leong Jim Meng, 57, quoted by the daily New Straits Times He claimed that he and his family were woken up by a loud crash “that sounded like an explosion” and felt the earth move.
“My family and I got trapped as dirt covered our tent. We managed to escape to a parking area and we heard a second landslide taking place,” he told the newspaper.
The campsite is located on an organic farm not far from the Genting Highlands hill station, a popular tourist destination with theme parks and Malaysia’s only casino.
“The search and rescue mission for the victims is being carried out by the STORM team,” said the director of the Selangor (Kuala Lumpur state) fire and disaster department, Datuk Norazam Khamis.
It is expected that in the next few hours, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, will visit the area of the tragedy.
(With information from EFE and The Associated Press)
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Source-www.infobae.com