BISHKEK: A landslide swept over part of a village in Kyrgyzstan early on Saturday, killing 24 people, including nine children, the emergencies ministry said.

The landslide hit the village of Ayu in the Osh region of the mountainous Central Asian country at around 0640 am and covered six houses with inhabitants inside, the emergencies ministry said in a statement.

“All 24 citizens of Kyrgzystan, nine of them children, died under the landslide in the south of the country,” emergencies ministry spokeswoman Elmira Sheripova said.

A total of 266 rescue workers including medics and soldiers were at the scene, Sheripova said.

The emergencies minister, Kubatbek Boronov, flew to the site on the orders of President Almazbek Atambayev to take “all possible measures to alleviate the consequences of the landslide and give all necessary help to families of the dead”, according to a statement on the president’s website.

Atambayev himself in an emotional address published on the presidential YouTube channel called on villagers to heed government warnings to leave their homes during extreme weather.

“The biggest pain in all the trouble that has befallen us is (the fact that) two or three days ago our compatriots living there did not listen to the specialists and refused to resettle,” said Atambayev, who announced Sunday as a day of national mourning.

“I appeal to my compatriots. A person’s life, especially the life of a child, is much more precious than any property, any livestock. You cannot put any sort of property above life!” Prime Minister Sooronbai Jeenbekov visited Ayu village after the landslide and said the government would provide “all necessary assistance.” “We profoundly understand that this is our shared tragedy,” he said in comments issued by the government’s press service.

The emergencies ministry said its chief Boronov was in charge of organising the evacuation of 40 families living close to the disaster zone and housing them in tents, given the risk of further landslides.

Published in Dawn, April 30th, 2017