More bodies recovered from Bandung landslide

Rescue workers recovered Thursday two more bodies of victims of a landslide at a tea plantation in Bandung, West Java, bringing the total number of recovered bodies to 19.

“Members of the victims' families were able to recognized the bodies so they could be buried fast," Kusnadi, a local security officer, told Antara news agency.

Kusnadi said rescue teams, which consisted of personnel from the National Military, National Police, and volunteers, had been working on the entire area of the landslide.

"We also have heavy machines to help them in finding the victims. The team is now focusing its searches on several spots where it believes bodies are buried," he said.

Officials had earlier said 72 had probably died but later revised the figure down to at least 46 dead or missing.

"It seems there is no possibility of anyone among those 46 surviving," said National Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono said Wednesday. The true toll could be higher.

Days of heavy rain prompted the landslide Tuesday at a mountainous tea plantation near the village of Tenjolaya in Ciwidey district.

Some village houses and plantation buildings survived unscathed above where terraced rows of tea plants cleaved off the hillside and slid to a plain below.

Scores of houses as well as the plantation office and warehouse were rolled and crushed as they slid down the hillside with a swath of top soil and mud hundreds of meters wide.

Around 600 terrified survivors fled their hillside homes for tents on safer ground, fearing more of the mountainside would collapse under the continuing soaking rain, Kardono said.

Many of the victims were plantation laborers who lived in huts on the plantation. Most of the recovered bodies of men, women and a child were dug up from the residential area.

Landslides are a common hazard in Indonesia during the current latter weeks of the monsoon season.