More than 229 people were killed in southern Ethiopia following two landslides on Sunday evening and Monday morning, after heavy rains in a remote mountainous area of the Gofa zone.
Dagmawi Ayele, a local administrator told BBC that young children and pregnant women were among the victims, with ten people being rescued alive.
The dead also include many individuals who attempted to rescue survivors.
Dagmawi said heavy rains caused a landslide on Sunday, and as police officers, teachers and residents from nearby villages frantically continued with search-and-rescue operations on Monday, a second landslide occurred, burying them too under the mud.
Gofa is part of the state known as Southern Ethiopia, located around 320km (199 miles) southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa.
According to the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Southern Ethiopia is among the areas of the country that have been hit by particularly heavy rain and flooding in recent months.
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