Rescuers pull nine bodies from landslide in flood-hit Myanmar

Rescuers scrambled Wednesday through a landslide which devastated a village in Myanmar's south at the weekend, a team leader told AFP, searching for more casualties in a disaster that has already claimed nine lives.

Myanmar's southernmost Tanintharyi region was lashed by intense rains last weekend, a wave of extreme weather that also battered neighbouring Thailand and inundated Bangkok.

Flash floods, cut roads and severed communications lines have complicated rescue and recovery efforts in Myanmar -- a nation already fractured by civil war since 2021.

Myo Min, chairman of the volunteer Dawei Zabuthiri Emergency Medical Service, said nine bodies, including elderly residents, had been recovered from a landslide that hit Ka Det Nge Htein village on Saturday night.

Eight more people remain missing under the mud in the village in Launglon township four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the Andaman Sea coastline, according to Myo Min.

"The situation was terrible," he said. "They died after being buried by the landslide as they slept."

"It was impossible for the villagers to escape," he added.

Rescuers across the region have reported many other landslides and floods, although no official overall casualty toll has been announced in the war-split area.

Control of Tanintharyi is fractured between the military -- which triggered civil war by launching a coup five years ago -- and dozens of ethnic minority and pro-democracy rebel groups.

The intense monsoon season weather has compounded the difficulties of coordinating aid efforts.

"We sometimes have to use foot messengers to keep in touch with the field team," said Myo Min.

In neighbouring Thailand, 24 people have been killed in floods since mid-September, according to the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, including four in Bangkok.

A citywide flood disaster was declared last weekend, where huge portions of the capital were gridlocked after 48 hours of heavy rain left roads, shops and homes waterlogged.

Myanmar, a country of 51 million people, ranks among the 10 nations most vulnerable to climate change, according to non-profit Germanwatch.

But the civil war often makes even the scale of natural disasters hard for aid organisations to judge.

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