MORE than 42 people were killed after their houses were swept away Tuesday in a landslide caused by torrential rain in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam, state media reported, showing images of rescuers desperately sifting the rubble for survivors.

“Searches are ongoing. We fear there are further deaths,” a senior local official told reporters as nightfall neared.

The state-run Cameroon Tribune newspaper, on its Facebook page, said “at least 33 bodies” had been found.

Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) earlier gave a death toll of around 30 after a score of houses collapsed.

A government statement broadcast on CRTV spoke of a “serious” incident causing “much loss of life” without mentioning a toll.

“The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone,” said the official of the West Region, of which Bafoussam is the capital, some 300 kilometers northwest of the capital Yaounde.

He said the landslide was caused by the torrential rain that has fallen in the country over the past few days as well as the wider region, with neighboring Central African Republic and Nigeria also seriously hit.

Pictures of the tragedy at Bafouassam posted to social media showed ramshackle houses having crumbled into the ochre-colored terrain and men clad in hard hats digging away at piles of mud in the search for survivors.

Landslides are quite exceptional in the area, although further south they are less rare in the rainy season, notably in the English-speaking southwest. It was in the southwestern town of Limbe that five people died in a landslide last year.  (SD-Agencies)