The death toll from a devastating landslide at a large garbage dump in Uganda’s capital, Kampala, has climbed to 13, police confirmed on Sunday. Rescue operations continue as search teams dig through the debris, hoping to find more survivors.
The landslide occurred late Friday night after weeks of torrential rain caused a section of the city’s only landfill, Kiteezi, to collapse. The massive pile of garbage broke off and buried several homes on the edge of the landfill while residents were asleep.
Initially, the Kampala Capital City Authority reported eight fatalities on Saturday. However, police spokesperson Patrick Onyango updated the figure, saying, “The latest count is 13 dead, but rescue services are still underway.” So far, at least 14 people have been pulled from the wreckage alive, though the exact number of those still trapped remains unclear.
The Uganda Red Cross has set up tents nearby to provide shelter for those displaced by the disaster. The Kiteezi landfill, which has been Kampala’s primary garbage dump for decades, has grown into a towering hill of waste. Local residents have long expressed concerns about the hazardous conditions at the site, warning of the environmental dangers and risks to human life.
Efforts by city authorities to secure a new landfill site have been delayed for years. The tragedy in Kampala is not an isolated incident; similar disasters have occurred in other parts of Africa due to poorly managed waste disposal sites. In 2017, a landslide at a garbage dump in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, claimed at least 115 lives, and in 2018, a similar event in Maputo, Mozambique, resulted in 17 deaths.
Footage from NTV Uganda showed residents walking across the landfill, which had collapsed onto parts of a house, while images from UBC Uganda depicted an excavator working to clear the debris. Heavy rains have caused flooding and landslides in several areas of Uganda in recent weeks, though no other fatalities had been reported until this incident.
