San Francisco Frontiers - Despair and anger in Conakry after deadly landfill collapse

The garbage dump in the suburbs of the capital collapsed onto a residential area in the early hours of Sunday following heavy rain, injuring 22 people and wiping away several homes.

Instant death, screaming, the wailing of those realising their loved ones had been killed: the residents of Dar es Salam were jolted into a sudden nightmare.

"We young people did everything to prevent this. We organised meetings and invited officials, but they didn't take the matter seriously," Hamza, a community activist, told AFP at the scene.

"The state failed to take steps to close the dump," Hamza said. "Yet they had promised us they would a year ago."

On Sunday, as excavators combed the garbage mounds, dozens of people including children desperately crowded at the top of the heaps, searching for survivors and the dead.

Rescue teams travelled back and forth, carrying the injured on stretchers, escorted by distraught relatives.

Dozens of grieving women in a state of shock cried in anguish, comforting each other.

- 'Tragedy' -

Alhassane Camara, a young neighbourhood resident, recounted the moment the landslide struck his home in the middle of the night, instantly killing his younger brother.

"I was sleeping with my two brothers... there were strange noises behind me. Then I saw things fall," he said.

Of his brothers "there were two little ones: one died inside and we managed to get the other one out", he said.

His mother, grandmother and sisters all got out as well: "It was God who helped us," Camara said.

Another resident, Aboubacar Camara, appeared exhausted but said he had managed to save his family.

"Around 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning we heard a slide, screams outside, everyone was screaming," he said.

Just as he stepped out of his home with his wife a second slide occurred, sweeping away several young men from the neighbourhood who had gone to rescue victims of the first landslide, he said.

"Everyone who went there to help, they all ended up buried in it," he said.

Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the scene Sunday, assuring that measures were being taken "to ensure medical care for the injured" and "assistance for those affected by this tragedy".

In recent days, the government had announced operations to evacuate residents and secure the area surrounding the landfill due to risk of landslides.

The rainy season is particularly long and intense in the region.

Meanwhile, Cellou Dalein Diallo, a leading Guinean opposition figure and former prime minister currently living in exile, described the event as "a tragedy that plunges us into dismay".

He said that closure of the dump had been scheduled for Sunday.

"It is now up to the competent authorities to establish, with full transparency, the circumstances that led to this disaster and to draw all the necessary conclusions," he said.

X.Roberts--SFF