Papua New Guinea reports more than 2,000 people buried in landslide

Papua New Guinea informed the U.N. on Monday that more than 2,000 people were buried in a massive landslide that swept over a remote village, according to a copy of the letter obtained by AFP.

"The landslide buried more than 2,000 people alive and caused major destruction," the country's national disaster centre told the U.N. office in Port Moresby.

Rescuers are racing to find survivors after a landslide obliterated a Papua New Guinea village and killed an estimated 670 people, a U.N. official told AFP on Monday.

The once-bustling remote hillside village in Enga province was almost wiped out when a chunk of Mount Mungalo collapsed in the early hours of Friday morning, burying scores of homes and the people sleeping inside them.

"It has been already three days and seven hours since this disaster hit so basically we are racing against time but to what extent we might be able to bring people to safety is another issue," said U.N. migration agency official Serhan Aktoprak.

Rescuers were working in hazardous conditions.

"Rocks continue to fall and move the ground," he said.

"To make things worse, there is groundwater running underneath the debris which is turning the surface of the ground into a slide."

About 250 homes nearby had been evacuated as a precaution, Aktoprak said.

Aid agencies and local leaders initially feared between 100 to 300 people had perished underneath the mud and rubble spanning almost four football fields in length.

But the estimated toll grew to 670 after local leaders and disaster workers reassessed the size of the population living there, the U.N. official said.

At least four bodies have been pulled from the debris, officials said.

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