Rescue workers digging up three houses buried in a landslide in northern Colombian have found the bodies of four minors, aged between 5 and 17, reported Radio Caracol Wednesday.
Eleven people are now known to have died when 500 thousand cubic meters of earth slipped Tuesday onto the village of Moncayo, near the town of La Cruz in the Nariño department. The landslide covered three houses, trapping 16 people.
The governor of Nariño, Antonio Navarro Wolf, said 300 people were working on the rescue operation, but it was impossible to get machinery to the area because it was a steep dirt road.
He said villagers had been warned of the dangers of landslides in 2010 but had decided to stay.
Wolf said, “I was at the Moncayo school myself on December 24 last year, convincing them to leave. There are tremendously steep slopes. Absolutely vertical. The people agreed, left the region, we gave them housing benefit, but unfortunately they came back.”
The Colombian Family Welfare Institute will provide counselling for people who have lost loved ones in the disaster.
