At least 18 dead in landslides on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

TANA TORAJA, Indonesia (AP) — A search and rescue team found the bodies of 18 killed by landslides on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and was still searching for two missing people, authorities said Monday.

Rescuers found about 14 bodies in Makale town on Sunday afternoon and four more in South Makale, said Mexianus Bekabel, head of the Macassar rescue unit.

“We are still searching for two more victims, but fog and drizzle are making the search difficult and officers on the ground are overwhelmed,” Sulaiman Malia, head of the Disaster Management Agency in Tana Toraja district, said Monday.

Mud from nearby hills, carried by torrential rains, fell on four houses just before midnight on Saturday in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province, according to local police chief Gunardi Mundu. . A family had gathered in one of the affected homes, he said.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers were involved in the search in the towns of Makale and South Makale, in a remote and rugged area, Mundu said. Rescuers managed to pull two injured people alive on Sunday morning, including an 8-year-old girl, and took them to a nearby hospital.

Communication outages, bad weather and unstable ground complicated search efforts, he said.

Tana Moraja has many popular tourist destinations, including a place with traditional dwellings and wooden sculptures depicting bodies buried in the caves, known as tau-tau.

Seasonal rains often cause landslides and flooding in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or on fertile floodplains.