KAMPALA (Reuters) – A landslide in eastern Uganda   has killed at least 80 people and villagers are digging with  bare hands and simple tools in the hope of finding survivors, a  government minister and Ugandan media said yesterday.

Ugandan media said the landslide engulfed a village in the  eastern Bududa district on the foothills of Mt Elgon on Monday  night after a seven-hour downpour.

“The latest reports I have indicate 80 bodies have been  pulled out,” Tarsis Kabwegyere, Minister for Disaster  Preparedness and Refugees, told Reuters.

The local NTV channel showed mud and wattle houses flattened  by viscous earth and wailing villagers piling bodies on a grassy  compound.

“About 300 people are feared buried by the landslide and the  landslides are expected to continue as the rains intensify in  the region,” he told Reuters earlier on Tuesday. Kabwegyere said a government response team was on the ground  with food and the Red Cross had sent doctors. Police and  volunteers were also helping in the rescue.

Parts of Uganda and neighbouring Kenya have had sustained  rain for much of the past two months, which is usually a dry  period between rainy seasons.

Local MP David Wakikoona told Reuters villagers had told him  about 100 to 150 people were at a trading centre when huge rocks  slid down the hillsides, transported by mud. Only eight people  were known to have survived so far, he said.

“So in all likelihood the death toll will be more than a  100,” he said.

The legislator said residents were using shovels, hoes and  their bare hands to dig through mounds of earth to retrieve  buried neighbours.

They periodically scrambled to safer ground, fearing more  mudslides, when rumbling was heard from the top of the hills.

“There’s no medical personnel whatsoever on the ground and  we have already told the government,” he said.

Kabwegyere told parliament earlier yesterday mudslides were  feared in five other districts currently experiencing deluges.  Floods are already plaguing large areas. In the eastern Bududa landslide, a health centre was buried  along with a nurse and three support staff, he told parliament.

He said three villages with more than 3,000 residents were  badly hit. The hamlets cling to isolated mountainsides with no  proper road access, making rescue efforts difficult.

Nearly 24 hours after the tragedy, earth movers and other  equipment that could bolster rescue efforts were unable to reach  the area, he said.