VIDEO: 50 years old garbage mountain that killed 50 in Ethiopia

A landslide swept through a 15-meter-high mountain of trash in Ethiopia. Agencies quoted officials saying that the mountain of trash gave way in a massive garbage dump near Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa.

Saturday night’s collapse occurred near the Koshe Garbage Landfill killing 50 persons; construction materials, wooden sticks and plastic sheeting could be seen in the wreckage.

Sources said that there were about 150 people there when the landslide occurred. The landfill has been a dumping ground for the city’s garbage for more than 50 years.

Tons of waste flooded a number of huts used by locals and buried a large number of people underneath the wreckage. City official said that the victims were mostly persons who had been scavenging items to make a living.

Head of the city communications bureau said that 32 female and 14 male, including some children, have died in this tragic incident. Many of the victims were squatters who scavenged for a living in the Koshe dump. For more than 50 years, the Koshe site has been the main garbage dump for Addis Ababa, a growing city of 4 million people.

This is not the first Garbage catastrophe in the world. In July 2017, a 15-meter-high garbage mountain swept and killed 208 Filipinos and injured 100 others in Manila. Moreover, an explosion at a waste burning site in Cotonou killed several people and injured hundreds more in September 2016.