Hopes were fading Wednesday of finding survivors of a landslide in eastern Uganda that has killed at least 80 people and left 300 missing, officials and rescue workers said.
Relentless rain, steep terrain and a lack of adequate equipment made it difficult to organise an efficient rescue effort two days after a mudslide engulfed entire communities on the slopes of Mount Elgon.
"We have found some cows, and some remains of houses, but we have not found a body since morning," Kevin Nabtua, the head of the Red Cross in eastern Uganda, told AFP.
"It is difficult. The appeal we are making now would be for equipment, like a tractor," Nabtua said, adding that rescuers working with shovels had little hope of cutting through the huge collapsed land mass.
The Ugandan minister coordinating the relief effort admitted that the necessary means could not be deployed to the remote region near Bududa village, where entire families were buried under the mud.
"People do walk there, so equipment that can be carried by people can reach the site," Minister for Relief, Refugees and Disaster Preparedness, Tarsis Kabwegyere told AFP.
"But bringing in heavy equipment by road, it's just not realistic."
A UN relief team arrived the regional capital of Mbale on Wednesday afternoon but had yet to reach the disaster site to draw up an assessment of needs.
According to the Red Cross, 80 bodies have been found since Monday's landslide and some 300 are missing, feared dead, in one of the east African nation's worst natural disasters in years.
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