At least 30 people were killed and dozens more hurt in a giant landslide at Ethiopia´s largest rubbish dump on the outskirts of the capital Addis Ababa, a city official said Sunday.
The tragedy on Saturday saw dozens of homes of squatters living in the dump levelled after a part of the largest pile of rubbish at the Koshe landfill collapsed, an AFP journalist said.
"The death toll is now 30," said Dagmawit Moges, head of the city communications bureau, adding that the number of fatalities could rise further.
Many of the victims were squatters who scavenged for a living in the dump, she said. Construction materials, wooden sticks and plastic sheeting could be seen in the wreckage, the AFP journalist said.
The Koshe site has for more than 40 years been the main garbage dump for Addis Ababa, a rapidly growing city of some four million people.
According to local residents, some 50 houses with about seven people living in each of them were built on the trash.
Degefe blamed the collapse on a new biogas plant being constructed on top of the hill. The AFP journalist saw bulldozers on top of the hill pushing piles of rubbish around.
Degefe said they were levelling ground for the plant, increasing pressure on the hillside and causing the collapse. The journalist also saw cracks in the ground at the top of the hill, suggesting that more of the pile could slide.
Koshe, whose name means "dirt" in local slang, was closed last year by city authorities who asked people to move to a new dump site outside Addis Ababa. But the community there did not want the landfill, and so the garbage collectors moved back.
Poverty and food insecurity are sensitive issues in Ethiopia, which was hit by a famine in 1984-85 after extreme drought.
In recent years, the country has been one of Africa´s top-performing economies and a magnet for foreign investment, with growth in near-double digits and huge infrastructure investment.
Still, nearly 20 million Ethiopians live below the poverty line set by the World Bank. Critics have hit out at the government´s economic policies saying they have a limited trickle-down effect from the elite down to the majority of the people.
