CISARUA: A landslide killed at least eight people and more than 80 are missing on Indonesia’s main island of Java on Saturday, a disaster official said.
Triggered by heavy rainfall, it struck two villages in Java’s West Bandung region at around 2:30 am (1930 GMT Friday) and buried residential areas.
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Abdul Muhari, a spokesman for the national disaster agency, or BNPB, confirmed that eight people were killed.
“As of Saturday 10:30am, dozens of residents were reported safe, and 82 people were still being searched for,” he said in a statement.
The disaster follows flooding and landslides late last year that killed around 1,200 people and displaced more than 240,000 in Indonesia’s Sumatra island, according to official figures.
Environmentalists and experts have pointed to the role forest loss played in the flooding and landslides that washed torrents of mud into villages.
West Bandung’s mayor Jeje Ritchie Ismail told reporters that the military, police and volunteers were assisting in the search for the missing.
However, he warned that the terrain was extremely difficult and that the ground remained unstable.
The local search and rescue agency said it was conducting manual excavation, spraying the soil with water pumps and using drones to search for the victims.
Floods and landslides are common in Indonesia during the rainy season, which typically runs from October to March.
Tropical storms and intense monsoon rains pummelled parts of South and Southeast Asia late last year, triggering deadly landslides and floods from the rainforests of Sumatra to highland plantations in Sri Lanka.
Forests help absorb rainfall and stabilise the ground held by their roots, and their absence makes areas more prone to flash flooding and landslides, David Gaveau, founder of conservation start-up The TreeMap, told AFP in December.
More than 240,000 hectares of primary forest were lost in 2024, according to analysis by The TreeMap’s Nusantara Atlas project.
Indonesia is regularly among the countries with the largest annual forest loss, NGOs have said, adding that mining, plantations, and fires have caused the clearance of large tracts of its lush rainforest over recent decades.
The government stripped more than two dozen permits this week from forestry, mining and hydroelectric companies in Sumatra.
Saturday’s landslide also comes after torrential rains battered Indonesia’s Siau island this month, causing a flash flood that killed at least 16 people.
