Landslide kills at least 14 attending funeral in Cameroon capital

A landslide in Cameroon’s capital Yaoundé on Sunday, November 27 killed at least 14 people who were attending a funeral, the region’s governor said.

“We are carrying the corpses to the mortuary of the central hospital, while the search for other people, or corpses, is still ongoing,” Naseri Paul Bea, governor of Cameroon’s Centre region, told media at the scene.

Dozens of people were attending a funeral on a soccer pitch at the base of a 20-metre-high soil embankment, which collapsed on top of them, witnesses told Reuters.

Yaounde is one of the wettest cities in Africa and is made of dozens of steep, shack-lined hills. Heavy rains have triggered several devastating floods throughout the country this year, weakening infrastructure and displacing thousands.

In 2019, at least 42 people died in a landslide in Bamoungoum village near the regional city of Bafoussam, western Cameroon.

Four pregnant women and an 18-year-old girl were among those who died in the disaster.