Jakarta: Rain-triggered landslides and floods
swept through villages in Indonesia`s provinces of Maluku and South Kalimantan, killing at least 21 people, officials said on Sunday.
The worst happened in Buru Island in eastern province of Maluku, where a landslide hit scores of houses, killing 18 villagers, said Priyadi Kardono, the spokesman for Indonesia`s
Disaster Management Agency.
Seven other villagers were injured in the Friday
landslide in the southern part of Buru, an island that once
served as a prison camp for communists in the 1970s.
The bodies of the dead have already been evacuated,
Kardono said.
Meanwhile, in South Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on
Borneo Island, a flood killed three people and left one
missing, said Surat
Wiyono of the local Search and Rescue Agency.
More than 3,000 families were affected by the flood that
began yesterday.
Dozens of people are killed every year in Indonesia, a
vast tropical archipelagic nation with more than 17,000
islands that are prone to landslides and floods during the
annual monsoon rains.
PTI
