Sixteen missing in Turkey landslide
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-03-18 09:06

A landslide buried more than 20 homes in central Turkey on Thursday, injuring nine people and leaving 16 others missing, officials said.

Rescue crews searching for survivors dug with shovels and bare hands in Sugozu village, but rivers of brown mud still flowing down the snow-covered hills forced rescuers to call off their efforts for the day, said Hasan Canpolat, governor of Sivas province, some 275 miles southeast of Ankara.

Rescuers search for survivors in the rubble of a mosque in the village of Sugozu in Sivas, a central Anatolian province some 450 kilometers, 280 miles, southeast of Ankara, Turkey, Thursday, March 17, 2005. A landslide in central Turkey buried 21 houses, and at least 17 people were reported missing. New landslides were hampering efforts to reach people feared buried under the mud.[AP]

Nine people were reported injured, including Elmas Arslan, who said she narrowly escaped from her family's house.

"All of a sudden there was dust everywhere," Arslan told private NTV television. "I grabbed my grandson and fell while running."

Her husband, Hifzi, helped pull her to safety and said the family's house was now covered by thick mud.

"I heard a huge sound. I thought 10 or 15 F-16 warplanes were flying overhead. When I went outside and looked, I started to run in fear. The mountain was coming on top of me," Hamit Keskin, the imam, or village prayer leader, told Anatolia.

Residents were being evacuated for fear of another large landslide, Canpolat said.

The prime minister's office said 16 people were missing, including at least two children, and that 21 houses were completely buried by mud.

Several neighboring cities sent paramilitary police, rescue workers and ambulances as well as heavy machinery.

Landslides and mudslides are not uncommon in central Turkey and have been blamed on the extensive deforestation of central Anatolia and on poor city planning.

In 1995, a mudslide in the southern town of Senirkent killed 74 people. Sixty-four were killed in a landslide in the northern town of Catak in 1988.

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