Landslide in Malaysia: At least 19 campers dead, more missing

At least 19 peo­ple, includ­ing sev­er­al chil­dren, have died after a land­slide hit a hol­i­day camp in Malaysi­a’s Selan­gor state.

Around 03:00 on Fri­day (19:00 Japan time on Thurs­day), a land­slide occurred on an agri­cul­tur­al farm in Batang Kali town­ship, and fam­i­lies were sleep­ing in tents.

Hun­dreds of res­cue work­ers dug up the mud on Fri­day to find survivors.

Farm offi­cials said at least 30 chil­dren and 51 adults were check­ing in overnight.

Malaysian author­i­ties said 14 peo­ple were still miss­ing and about 700 staff were con­duct­ing search and res­cue oper­a­tions, accord­ing to local media.

At least four chil­dren are among the dead, accord­ing to the Malaysian fire department.

The New Straits Times report­ed that more than 20 ele­men­tary school teach­ers and their fam­i­lies were in attendance.

Local Gov­ern­ment Devel­op­ment Min­is­ter Nga Kor Ming report­ed that the camp­ground was oper­at­ing illegally.

Nga also said he had ordered the imme­di­ate clo­sure of “high-risk” camp­sites near rivers, water­falls and hills for sev­en days.

A map show­ing where land­slides occurred in Malaysia.
The cause of the land­slide that occurred on the moun­tain pass in the Batang Kali for­est area near the Genting High­lands is unknown.

Locals said it was rain­ing light­ly, but there were no heavy rains or earth­quakes in advance. But in Malaysia, the mon­soon sea­son is upon us.

The land­slide start­ed in a hilly area more than 30m from the camp­site and spread over an acre.

Images post­ed online by Malaysian res­cuers show work­ers in hard hats climb­ing a rough ter­rain amid uproot­ed trees and oth­er debris.

One of the campers, Thay Linh Suan, said he and his moth­er sur­vived but his broth­er died and anoth­er was injured and tak­en to hospital.

“I could feel the tent becom­ing unsta­ble and the sur­round­ings col­laps­ing,” he told the Malaysian news­pa­per Beri­ta Harian.

“My moth­er and I man­aged to crawl out and survive.”

I was camp­ing with a large fam­i­ly of over 40 people.

Anoth­er sur­vivor, Leong Jim Meng, said he heard an explo­sion before the ground began to move.

So he and his fam­i­ly woke up, tem­porar­i­ly trapped inside the tent by the rub­ble, but man­aged to get out.

“It’s dark and I can’t real­ly see what’s going on,” he said.

Prime Min­is­ter Anwar Ibrahim was expect­ed to arrive on the scene late Fri­day, fol­low­ing oth­er gov­ern­ment ministers.

On his Face­book page, he expressed his con­do­lences to his vic­tims and hopes there are more survivors.

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