50 feared dead in landslides

Bogota - An avalanche swept away more than 40 people, many of them searching for bodies from a previous avalanche, in a town …

Bogota - An avalanche swept away more than 40 people, many of them searching for bodies from a previous avalanche, in a town in the Andean mountains of Colombia.

Red Cross and Civil Defence workers, firemen and municipal officials had been working in the town of Argelia to extract a small group of people trapped by an earlier landslide when tons of rocks and earth came crashing down on the rescue site.

Civil defence officials said 34 bodies had been pulled from under the rubble by early yesterday.

But Ms Senobia Ospina, Argelia's mayor, said the number of victims was expected to rise to 50. At least 16 people were missing and still believed to be lying beneath the chunk of mountain that came crashing down on the town.

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Much of Colombia has been lashed by heavy rains this year associated by meteorologists with the La Nina weather phenomenon caused by cooling currents in the Pacific Ocean. At least 1,230 people have died in an earthquake.