Papua New Guinea: Thousands evacuated from path of landslide as rocks and debris continue to fall
Thousands in Papua New Guinea have been ordered to evacuate from the path of a landslide that killed at least 670 people, as fears grow of a second major rockfall.
Officials from the Pacific country said the chance of finding survivors under the rubble in Yambali is slim, after previously saying they believe more than 2,000 people were buried alive.
Enga province disaster committee chairperson Sandis Tsaka explained the area “is very unstable”, hindering relief efforts for those hit by Friday’s landslide.
Military convoys have also had to escort aid teams over unrest among survivors. Meanwhile, the UN’s International Organisation for Migration (IOM) previously estimated 670 villagers died.
On Tuesday afternoon, the UN said six bodies have already been retrieved from the rubble, and an estimated 7,849 people have been displaced.
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Rescue ongoing after deadly landslide
‘Another landslide can happen’
Serhan Aktoprak, chief of the IOM’s mission in Papua New Guinea, said on Tuesday his agency is hearing “that another landslide can happen and maybe 8,000 people need to be evacuated”.
“This is a major concern,” he added. “The movement of the land and the debris is causing a serious risk, and overall, the total number of people that may be affected might be 6,000 or more.
“If this debris mass is not stopped, if it continues moving, it can gain speed and further wipe out other communities and villages further down.”
The landslide occurred after a limestone mountainside sheared away at around 3am (6pm in the UK) on Friday.
Boulders, loose earth and splintered trees were then washed down into Yambali by rainfall trapped between the debris and ground.
Pic: AP
Pic: AP
Fears of disease outbreak
Footage posted on social media showed locals pulling out people from beneath the rubble and searching through mud, which Mr Aktoprak warned could lead to an outbreak of diseases in the village.
“My biggest fear at the moment is corpses are decaying… water is flowing and this is going to pose serious health risks in relation to contagious diseases,” he said.
Mr Aktoprak separately told Sky News on Tuesday morning that “rocks are continuing to fall” in Papua New Guinea and added: “The land mass debris is moving towards lower areas.
“And to make [the] situation worse, water has been flowing between the soil on which the mass debris had landed for days.
“Now the water levels – as reported by my colleagues – are rising to the upper levels of the debris, making it difficult.”
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Aid bridge collapses
It comes as a UN official said a bridge, part of the main route for delivering aid to Yambali, collapsed on Tuesday.
Itayi Viriri, regional spokesperson for the IOM, said the collapse has cut off Enga province from the main highway, forcing heavy equipment to take a longer route through the rough terrain.
“The conditions are very, very difficult,” he added. “In some parts, the land is still moving.”
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He added teams are working to prevent “another disaster” and told a UN briefing in Geneva: “We still have water underneath the rubble so that is making the whole area quite uneven. It ensures all response efforts have to be done in a very careful manner.”
Australia has also announced an initial aid package of $2.5m (£1.3m) and sent a disaster response team to Yambali, which was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday.
Papua New Guinea is a developing Pacific nation comprising mostly subsistence farmers, with over 800 languages spoken.
Some 85% of its 10 million population live in rural areas.
Donald Trump has agreed to send “top of the line weapons” to NATO to support Ukraine – and threatened Russia with “severe” tariffs if it doesn’t agree to end the war.
Speaking with NATO secretary general Mark Rutte during a meeting at the White House, the US president said: “We’ve made a deal today where we are going to be sending them weapons, and they’re going to be paying for them.
“This is billions of dollars worth of military equipment which is going to be purchased from the United States,” he added, “going to NATO, and that’s going to be quickly distributed to the battlefield.”
Weapons being sent include surface-to-air Patriot missile systems and batteries, which Ukraine has asked for to defend itself from Russian air strikes.
Pic: Reuters
Mr Trump also said he was “very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened “severe tariffs” of “about 100%” if there isn’t a deal to end the war in Ukraine within 50 days.
The White House added that the US would put “secondary sanctions” on countries that buy oil from Russia if an agreement was not reached.
It comes after weeks of frustration from Mr Trump against Vladimir Putin’s refusal to agree to an end to the conflict, with the Russian leader telling the US president he would “not back down” from Moscow’s goals in Ukraine at the start of the month.
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Trump says Putin ‘talks nice and then bombs everybody’
During the briefing on Monday, Mr Trump said he had held calls with Mr Putin where he would think “that was a nice phone call,” but then “missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city, and that happens three or four times”.
“I don’t want to say he’s an assassin, but he’s a tough guy,” he added.
Earlier this year, Mr Trump told Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “you’re gambling with World War Three” in a fiery White House meeting, and suggested Ukraine started the war against Russia as he sought to negotiate an end to the conflict.
After Mr Trump’s briefing, Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev said on Telegram: “If this is all that Trump had in mind to say about Ukraine today, then all the steam has gone out.”
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Meanwhile, Mr Zelenskyy met with US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Kyiv, where they “discussed the path to peace” by “strengthening Ukraine’s air defence, joint production, and procurement of defence weapons in collaboration with Europe”.
He thanked both the envoy for the visit and Mr Trump “for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries”.
At least 30 people have been killed in the Syrian city of Sweida in clashes between local military groups and tribes, according to Syria’s interior ministry.
Officials say initial figures suggest around 100 people have also been injured in the city, where the Druze faith is one of the major religious groups.
The interior ministry said its forces will directly intervene to resolve the conflict, which the Reuters news agency said involved fighting between Druze gunmen and Bedouin Sunni tribes.
It marks the latest episode of sectarian violence in Syria, where fears among minority groups have increased since Islamist-led rebels toppled President Bashar al Assad in December, installing their own government and security forces.
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In March, Sky’s Stuart Ramsay described escalating violence within Syria
The violence reportedly erupted after a wave of kidnappings, including the abduction of a Druze merchant on Friday on the highway linking Damascus to Sweida.
Last April, Sunni militia clashed with armed Druze residents of Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, and fighting later spread to another district near the capital.
But this is the first time the fighting has been reported inside the city of Sweida itself, the provincial capital of the mostly Druze province.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reports the fighting was centred in the Maqwas neighbourhood east of Sweida and villages on the western and northern outskirts of the city.
It adds that Syria’s Ministry of Defence has deployed military convoys to the area.
Western nations, including the US and UK, have been increasingly moving towards normalising relations with Syria.
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Concerns among minority groups have intensified following the killing of hundreds of Alawites in March, in apparent retaliation for an earlier attack carried out by Assad loyalists.
That was the deadliest sectarian flare-up in years in Syria, where a 14-year civil war ended with Assad fleeing to Russia after his government was overthrown by rebel forces.
The city of Sweida is in southern Syria, about 24 miles (38km) north of the border with Jordan.
The man convicted of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher has been charged with sexual assault against an ex-girlfriend.
Rudy Guede, 38, was the only person who was definitively convicted of the murder of 21-year-old Ms Kercher in Perugia, Italy, back in 2007.
He will be standing trial again in November after an ex-girlfriend filed a police report in the summer of 2023 accusing Guede of mistreatment, personal injury and sexual violence.
Guede, from the Ivory Coast, was released from prison for the murder of Leeds University student Ms Kercher in 2021, after having served about 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
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Since last year – when this investigation was still ongoing – Guede has been under a “special surveillance” regime, Sky News understands, meaning he was banned from having any contact with the woman behind the sexual assault allegations, including via social media, and had to inform police any time he left his city of residence, Viterbo, as ruled by a Rome court.
Guede has been serving a restraining order and fitted with an electronic ankle tag.
The Kercher murder case, in the university city of Perugia, was the subject of international attention.
Ms Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student, was found murdered in the flat she shared with her American roommate, Amanda Knox.
The Briton’s throat had been cut and she had been stabbed 47 times.
(L-R) Raffaele Sollecito, Meredith Kercher and Amanda Knox. File pic: AP
Ms Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were placed under suspicion.
Both were initially convicted of murder, but Italy’s highest court overturned their convictions, acquitting them in 2015.
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