Landslide kills 10, traps more

JAKARTA - A landslide triggered by heavy rains crashed into a village in Indonesia's Central Java province yesterday, killing at least 10 people and trapping many more under muddy debris.

The pre-dawn local time landslide, the latest in a series on Java Island that killed 71 people earlier this week, smashed into hundreds of houses in a mountainous village of around 700 residents.

Many were probably praying in the village mosque at the time of the landslide, police said, adding that the mosque was destroyed.

"Ten victims have been found dead and there could be many more because more than 100 houses are buried in mud," Yusman Irianto, head of the social department in the nearby town of Banjarnegara, said from the scene. "We are looking for more victims and residents are trying to find out how many are missing."

Police in Banjarnegara, 350km east of Jakarta, put the death toll so far at four and said a dozen were injured. Broto Suyatno, a police officer from Banjarnegara, said about 500 of the 722 people in the Central Java village had been reported alive in the wake of the disaster.

Around the East Java village of Kemiri, hundreds of rescue workers and soldiers have been trying to reach a handful of villages still cut off by floods and landslides that swept through the area.

- REUTERS