The death toll from two landslides in southern Ethiopia has jumped to 229, a local official said, as the search for survivors and casualties continued into the second day.
Crowds of people were gathered at the site of the tragedy, some clawing through the mud with shovels or their bare hands, according to images posted on social media by the local authority.
So far, 148 men and 81 women are confirmed to have died after the disaster struck in the Kencho-Shacha locality in the Gofa Zone yesterday, the local Communications Affairs Department said in a statement.
Five people had been pulled alive from the mud and were receiving treatment at medical facilities, the government-owned Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation reported earlier.
It quoted local administrator Dagemawi Ayele as saying that most of the victims were buried after they went to help the inhabitants of a house hit by an initial landslide.
"Those who rushed for live-saving work have perished in the disaster including the locality's administrator, teachers, health professionals and agricultural professionals," EBC quoted Mr Dagemawi as saying.
Images posted on social media by the Gofa authority showed residents carrying bodies of the dead on makeshift stretchers, some wrapped in plastic sheeting.
Ethiopia, the second most populous country in Africa with around 120 million people, is highly vulnerable to climate disasters including flooding and drought.
'Stand in solidarity'
African Union Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat said "our hearts and prayers" were with the families of the victims.
"We stand in strong solidarity with the people and Government of Ethiopia as rescue efforts continue to find the missing and assist the displaced," he said on X.
Gofa is roughly 450 kilometres from the capital Addis Ababa, a drive of about ten hours, and is located north of the Maze National Park.
"The area of the disaster is rural, remote and very mountainous," an Ethiopian refugee living in Kenya who said he is from a district neighbouring Geze-Gofa said.
"The soil in that area isn't strong, so when heavy rains and landslides happen the soil immediately runs down to the ground below."
The South Ethiopia regional state has been battered by the short seasonal rains between April and early May that have caused flooding and mass displacement, according to the UN's humanitarian response agency OCHA.
It said in May that "floods impacted over 19,000 people in several zones, displacing over a thousand and causing damage to livelihoods and infrastructure".
In 2016, 41 people were killed in a landslide following heavy rains in Wolaita, also in South Ethiopia.
In 2017, at least 113 people died when a mountain of garbage collapsed in a dump in the outskirts of Addis Ababa.
The deadliest landslide in Africa was in Sierra Leone's capital in Freetown in August 2017 when 1,141 people perished.
Mudslides in the Mount Elgon region of eastern Uganda killed more than 350 people in February 2010.
