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Nineteen members of Indonesia’s elite marine force are among 80 people missing in deep mud after they were swept away or buried by a weekend landslide that tore through a mountainside in West Java province, killing dozens, officials said Monday.
The marines were training in rugged terrain and heavy rainfall when the predawn landslide on Saturday swallowed their camp and some 34 houses in Pasir Langu village on the slopes of Mount Burangrang. A massive search operation has grown from 500 to 2,100 personnel using bare hands, water pumps, drones and excavators.
Seventeen were confirmed dead, including 11 who were identified, and six others still undergoing identification process, said National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari.
Among the dead were four marines, navy Chief of Staff Adm. Muhammad Ali told reporters on Monday. They were part of a 23-member unit training for a long-duration border assignment on the Indonesia–Papua New Guinea frontier, he said. The rest are unaccounted for.
“Heavy rain over two nights triggered the slope failure that buried their training area,” Ali said. “Heavy machinery has struggled to reach the site, the access road is narrow and the ground remains unstable.”
Rescuers were digging through tons of mud, rocks and uprooted trees in a landslide that stretched more than 2 kilometers (1.2 miles), said Yudhi Bramantyo, the operation director of the National Search and Rescue Agency. He said that in some places the mud reached up to 8 meters (26 feet).
About 230 residents living near the site were evacuated to government shelters.
Seasonal rains and high tides from about October to April frequently cause flooding and landslides in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile flood plains.
