KAMPALA, Uganda: Nineteen people including five children are confirmed dead after a landslide at a huge garbage dump in the Ugandan capital Kampala, a senior official said on Sunday, amid claims the site was a disaster waiting to happen. Local media said homes, people and livestock were buried in mountains of waste at the landfill in the northern Kampala district of Kiteezi on Saturday after a collapse caused by heavy downpours.

President Yoweri Museveni said he had directed the army’s special forces to help in the search and rescue operation and demanded to know who allowed people to live near such a “potentially hazardous and dangerous heap”. The area’s resident commissioner Yasin Ndide told AFP after visiting the scene of the disaster that the death toll was now 19, including five children. “The rescue mission is ongoing but with little hope of finding more survivors,” he said, adding that local authorities were setting up temporary shelters for those affected by the disaster.

Ndide blamed the “encroachment” of local people who had breached the perimeter fence and settled on the site for the loss of life. Kampala’s metropolitan police spokesman Patrick Onyango had earlier told reporters at the scene that 14 bodies had been recovered on Saturday, and another four on Sunday.

Onyango also told AFP that 14 people had been rescued, while an estimated 1,000 were displaced and that the police were working with other government agencies and community leaders to see how to help those affected. Kampala mayor Erias Lukwago said that “many, many more could be still buried in the heap as the rescue operation is ongoing”. He described it as a “national disaster”, blaming corrupt officials who he said had been syphoning off money that should have been used to maintain the landfill.

‘Danger zone’

Museveni said in a statement posted on X that he had ordered payments to the victims’ families of five million Ugandan shillings ($1,300) for each fatality and one million shillings ($270) for each injured person. He also called for an investigation into how people were allowed to live so close to the site and ordered the removal of all those living in the “danger zone”.

Excavators were still churning through huge mounds of rubbish on Sunday as crowds of local residents looked on, some wailing in despair. Lukwago had on Saturday raised concerns about the safety of the 36-acre (14-hectare) landfill which was established in 1996 and takes in almost all garbage collected across Kampala. “This is a disaster and was bound to happen as the landfill was full to capacity,” he told AFP, adding that it received about 1,500 tons of waste a day. — AFP