The national disaster centre in Papua New Guinea says more than 2,000 people were buried alive in a massive landslide on Friday.
Papua New Guinea is an island nation in Oceania. It lies in the south-western Pacific and includes the eastern half of New Guinea and several offshore islands.
The landslide crashed through Yambali village around 3am on Friday while most of the community was asleep.
More than 150 houses were reportedly buried beneath debris almost two stories high.
Survivors rummaged through tonnes of earth and rubble for missing relatives, as a first emergency convoy delivered food and other supplies on Saturday.
In a letter to the UN released on Monday, Luseta Laso Mana, acting director of the agency, said the landslide “buried more than 2,000 people alive” and caused “major destruction” at Yambali village in the Enga province.
The UN International Organisation for Migration (IOM) had estimated that 670 people had been killed as of Sunday morning.
Heavy equipment and aid has been slow to arrive due to difficulty in reaching the location.
Papua New Guinea has a population of around 10 million people. It is the most populous South Pacific nation after Australia.
The country sits on the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’ — the arc of seismic faults where much of the world’s volcanic activity occurs.
