Emergency relief arrives for Papua New Guinea landslide [Video]

MELBOURNE, Australia –

Survivors searched through tons of earth and rubble by hand looking for missing relatives while a first emergency convoy delivered food, water and other provisions Saturday at the site of a landslide that devastated a remote village in the mountains of Papua New Guinea and was feared to have buried scores of people, officials said.

An assessment team reported “suggestions” that 100 people were dead and 60 houses buried by the mountainside that collapsed in Enga province a few hours before dawn Friday, said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the International Organization for Migration’s mission in the South Pacific island nation.

Confirming a firm number of those who have died will be difficult “given it is considered culturally taboo to ask survivors of the status of their relatives,” Aktoprak said.

Only three bodies had been recovered by early Saturday from the vast swath of earth, boulders and splintered trees that …