Nepal landslide kills seven: police

KATHMANDU (AFP): Seven members of the same family, including three children, were killed on Thursday when a landslide triggered by heavy monsoon rains buried their house in a remote village in northeastern Nepal, police said.

Police rescuers were sent to the area to search for survivors after part of a hillside above Thumkina village broke away and smashed into two houses below, officials told AFP.

“In total seven people have died,” Anup Narayan Jha, a local police constable, said.

“Four more are missing while two have been seriously injured,” he said adding that the injured were being taken to the nearest health post.

“The downpour started in the evening and stopped only in the middle of the night,” he further said.

Jha told AFP that six more police officers were en route to the disaster site, an eight-hour trek from the nearest road.

He said the family lived in a thinly populated village in the rugged highlands of Taplejung district, one of Nepal’s poorest areas, 260 kilometres east of Kathmandu.

Hundreds of people die every year from flooding and landslides during Nepal’s monsoon season, which typically starts in June and ends in September.