More than 30 people killed and dozens injured due to massive landslide in Colombia: They declared it a “public disaster”

more than 30 people have died Dozens of people were injured in several landslides in Colombia on Friday. As reported this Saturday by Francia Márquez Mina, Vice President of that country.

“I deeply regret his death 33 people in this tragedy“According to preliminary reports from the area, mostly girls and boys,” Marquez Mina published on his X account, formerly Twitter. “Our full solidarity with the Chocó department and the families of the victims.”

“At this time, search and rescue operations are ongoing for people trapped under the landslide on the Quibdo-Medellín highway in Carmen del Atrato.”

The area where the landslide occurred is located about 85 miles southwest of the city of Medellín.

One of the landslides occurred on Friday afternoon and buried several vehicles that had been stopped, apparently triggered by an avalanche that had earlier blocked the highway between Chocó’s capital, Medellin, and Quibdo.

In the video recorded by eyewitnesses, a queue of vehicles is seen stopped on the road, waiting for the road to open, when suddenly the vehicle overturns the mountain falls down They are being buried with their occupants.

According to witnesses quoted by local media, there were also fifty people They were taking shelter from the rain When an avalanche hit a house.

The National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) reported 35 people injured Those who have been transferred to health care centers and personnel from the National Army, the Colombian Aerospace Force, the Civil Protection and the Fire Department are working in the area.

Rescue operations are ongoing and information is still partial, as there is a road, although it connects Medellín to Quibdo, the capital of the Chocó jungle, but is remote and the signal is intermittent.

The army, which has deployed 30 rescue troops, is using drones “to identify possible locations where trapped personnel can be found” and is also using dogs to locate victims.

The governor of Chocó, Nubia Carolina Córdoba, said that there are bodies that have been transferred to Medellín and others are in the immediate response unit of Quibdo, the capital of this department, so that they can come and identify them.