ADDIS ABABA   -  Using shovels or their bare hands, local residents on Tuesday searched desper­ately for survivors after a landslide in a remote area of southern Ethiopia killed at least 229 people, the deadliest such disaster recorded in the Horn of Africa nation. Crowds gathered at the site of the tragedy in an isolated and mountainous area of South Ethiopia regional state, ac­cording to images posted on social media by the local authority.

So far, 148 men and 81 women are con­firmed to have lost their lives after the disaster struck in the Kencho-Shacha lo­cality in the Gofa Zone on Monday, the lo­cal Communications Affairs Department said in a statement. Five people had been pulled alive from the mud and were re­ceiving treatment at medical facilities, the government-owned Ethiopian Broadcast­ing Corporation reported earlier.

It quoted local administrator Dage­mawi Ayele as saying that most of the victims were buried after they went to help the inhabitants of a house hit by an initial landslide. “Those who rushed for live-saving work have perished in the disaster including the locality’s adminis­trator, teachers, health professionals and agricultural professionals,” EBC quoted Dagemawi as saying.

“The number of dead from the sudden landslide that happened in Geze-Gofa district of Gofa zone has passed 146,” a statement from the Gofa zone Communi­cations Affairs Department said, quoting local official Habtamu Fetena. Habtamu said the bodies of 96 men and 50 women had been found, adding that the search was “continuing vigorously” and warning that the number of dead could increase.

The local authority had given a death toll of 55 on Monday but there is scant in­formation about the disaster due to the re­moteness of the region. Images shared on Facebook by the local authority on Mon­day showed large crowds of people near a devastating scene of tumbled red soil.

The photographs showed people using their bare hands to dig through the dirt in search of survivors, with no sign of official rescue services.

Gofa zone is roughly 450 kilometres (270 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa, a drive of about 10 hours, and is located north of the Maze National Park. “The area of the disaster is rural, remote and very mountainous,” an Ethiopian refugee living in Kenya who said he is from a dis­trict neighbouring Geze-Gofa told AFP.

“The soil in that area isn’t strong, so when heavy rains and landslides happen the soil immediately runs down to the ground below.” Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa with around 120 million people, is highly vulnerable to climate disasters including flooding and drought. The South Ethiopia regional state has been battered by the short sea­sonal rains between April and early May that have caused flooding and mass dis­placement, according to the UN’s humani­tarian response agency OCHA. It said in May that “floods impacted over 19,000 people in several zones, displacing over a thousand and causing damage to liveli­hoods and infrastructure”. The southern region area has experienced tragic land­slides previously, with at least 32 people killed in 2018 after two separate land­slides within a week of each other.