“It is now clear that more than 40% of those affected are children under the age of 16 who have been deeply traumatized by the loss of their families, homes and livelihoods,” Unicef’s representative in Papua New Guinea, Angela Kearney, said in a statement today.
This percentage, calculated after a “rapid assessment”, is established in the approximate total of 4,000 affected by the avalanche, including those who lost their homes or sources of income, according to estimates by the Papuan Ministry of Defense and Unicef.
According to a letter from the country’s National Disaster Center, sent on Monday to the UN coordination in Papua New Guinea, “more than 2,000 people were buried alive” by the “huge avalanche”.
However, UN sources are urging caution over the figures, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which has six workers in the disaster area, estimated on Sunday that there were around 670 possible deaths due to the direct impact of the avalanche.
The tasks of searching for and rescuing victims are complex due to the instability of the terrain.
The collapse of part of a mountain on Friday morning, for reasons still unknown, occurred near the Porgera gold mine, in Enga province, and in a town in the region, about 600 kilometers from Port Moresby.
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