More than 300 people are feared dead after heavy rain caused a series of landslides in the mountainous eastern region of Bududa in Uganda, writes BBC News, Wednesday, 3 March 2010 at http://news.bbc.co.uk.
Forwarded by Budhi Mulyawan 030310.

Heavy rains caused the landslide in Bududa district, Uganda

A trading centre in a village was flattened, leaving shops and houses buried under the mud, officials said.

Rescuers are digging in the mud with handheld tools as mechanical diggers can not reach the affected villages.

Minister for Disaster Preparedness Musa Ecweru has gone to the remote area to assess what help is needed.

Mr Ecweru said he had counted 58 bodies himself but local officials had told him many more people had died.

All of a sudden the church collapsed. Mud covered the whole place. Five people seated next to me died James Kasawi, survivor

He said the government had provided 100 coffins "to give the dead citizens a very decent burial".

One survivor said he was at a church service when the landslide hit.

"All of a sudden the church collapsed," James Kasawi told the Associated Press from a hospital in Bududa.

"Mud covered the whole place. Five people seated next to me died. I only survived because my head was above the mud."

Ongoing rains have also caused widespread flooding while the landslides have damaged roads and made it almost impossible to get the kind of earth-moving equipment that rescuers need into the site of the disaster, says BBC' East Africa correspondent Peter Greste says.

The Red Cross has asked the government to send Ugandan army engineers to help clear the debris, but with at least a month more of heavy rains forecast the authorities are expecting things to get worse before they get better, our correspondent adds.

The region, about 275km (170 miles) north-east of the capital Kampala, often suffers from landslides but this is an unusually high death toll.

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