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Journalism of Courage
Landslides triggered by days of heavy rain killed at least 40 people on an eastern Indonesian island on Saturday, and scores more were believed to be buried under the mud, officials said.
Lt Col Ginting Santoso, a police chief in the affected area on Flores island, told Metro TV that as of late Saturday 40 bodies had been recovered from two landslides, and that rescuers were searching for at least 29 other people believed to be buried.
Roads made inaccessible by a three-day deluge were complicating rescue operations and making compiling definitive tolls of the dead and missing difficult. “We have not been able to get heavy machinery to the villages, because landslides have also cut off the main road to the area,” said Rustam Pakaya, the chief of the Health Department’s Crisis Center in Jakarta.
