Death toll from Uganda rubbish dump collapse reaches 18

Kampala: The death toll from a landslide at a vast garbage dump in the Ugandan capital Kampala has risen to 18, police said on Sunday, amid claims the...

Kampala: The death toll from a landslide at a vast garbage dump in the Ugandan capital Kampala has risen to 18, police said on Sunday, amid claims the site was a disaster waiting to happen.

Local media said homes, people and livestock were engulfed 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".

Kampala's metropolitan police spokesman Patrick Onyango told reporters at the scene that 14 bodies had been recovered on Saturday, and another four on Sunday.

He gave no breakdown, but on Saturday the Kampala Capital City Authority, which operates the landfill, had given a death toll of eight including two children.