ATS
The first three bodies of victims of the landslide in northern Peru were found on Wednesday during search operations for missing persons. The flow swept away several homes on Tuesday.
“We were able to recover the body of a third person, a 62-year-old man. He was under the rubble of a market,” Lieutenant Carlos Alberto Valderrama, the police chief of the village affected by the disaster, told AFP.
Earlier, rescuers had located the bodies of a man and that of a one-month-old girl, rescue spokesman Jose Rivas told reporters. “He most likely tried to protect the child, and the rockslide buried them both.”
Relief operations have been halted due to heavy rains falling in the area, Mr. Valderrama also said Wednesday evening.
Earlier, authorities corrected the number of missing people downwards to eight, ‘including three children’, from 15 on Tuesday hours following tons of dirt fell from the top of a high hill, as testify to the images recorded by the inhabitants of Retamas.
Fewer buried houses
The number of buried houses has also been corrected. “About seven,” said Defense Minister Jose Gavidia, who is leading the rescue operations, on Wednesday. Far less than the 60 hastily announced by the governor of the La Libertad region, Manuel Llempen.
The landslide occurred Tuesday morning in this isolated village of 5,000 inhabitants, located 2,800 meters above sea level in the region of La Libertad (500 km north of Lima), 16 hours drive from the city of Trujillo , the regional capital.
Landslides are common during the southern summer months in the Peruvian Andes due to seasonal rains. In 2009, at least 13 people, including a child, had already died in Retamas in a landslide.
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