Residents can be seen digging with their bare hands in remote mountain areas to search for survivors.
More than 200 people have been killed in two landslides in southern Ethiopia, officials say.
Provincial authorities said Tuesday that the first landslide, triggered by heavy rains in a remote part of Gofa province, occurred on Monday, followed by a second landslide that buried people flocking to rescue them.
At least 148 men and 81 women were killed in the disaster, which occurred on Monday in Kencho Shacha area of Gofa district, the local news agency said in a statement.
Southern Region State Representative Alemayehu Boudi confirmed the death toll and said “search and rescue operations are ongoing.”
The state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) earlier reported that five people had been pulled alive from the mud and were being treated at a medical facility.
Most of the victims were buried after authorities went to help residents whose homes were damaged in the first landslide, the paper quoted local administrator Dagemawi Ayeley as saying.
“Local government officials, teachers, medical workers, farmers and others who rushed to help save lives died in the disaster,” Dagemawi told EBC.
Gofa is part of a state known as the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) and lies about 320 kilometers (199 miles) southwest of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Parliament member Kemal Hashi Mohamed told Al Jazeera from Addis Ababa that the second landslide occurred “minutes after” the first. “People are preparing shelters and giving food,” he said.
Images shared on social media by state media outlet Fana Broadcasting Corp showed hundreds of people digging by hand near the devastating scene of the collapsed mud.
The state was hit by a short seasonal rainy season in April and May, which caused flooding and large-scale displacement, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
“Floods affected more than 19,000 people in several regions, forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate, and caused damage to livelihoods and infrastructure,” the ministry said in May.
The southern region has been hit by landslides before, with two occurring within a week in 2018, killing at least 32 people.
The floods and landslides come at a time when other parts of the country are experiencing severe drought, forcing traditional pastoral communities to seek alternative ways of producing food.
The United Nations reports that recent climate-related challenges have left millions of people facing malnutrition in the country.
