Landslide in Indonesia: Massive landslides triggered by torrential rains in Indonesia’s Sulawesi island on Sunday killed at least 14 people and left several others injured. According to the reports, during the incident, which occurred on midnight of Saturday and Sunday, a few people also reported to be missing ever since the landslides hit the island. The injured persons have been shifted to nearby hospitals and are being treated.

A senior police official from Sulawesi Island stated that tonnes of mud fell from surrounding hills during the landslides onto four houses beneath the hills. The incident reportedly took place around midnight of Saturday and Sunday in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province. The local police chief Gunardi Mundu stated that a family gathering was being held in one of the affected houses, which led to the major loss of lives.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers joined the search in the villages of Makale and South Makale, in a remote, hilly area, Mundu said. Rescuers early Sunday managed to pull out two injured people, including an 8-year-old girl, and rushed them to a nearby hospital.

Rescuers by Sunday afternoon had recovered at least 11 bodies in Makale village and three bodies in South Makale, and were still searching for three others, including a 3-year-old girl, said National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari.

Downed communications lines, bad weather and unstable soil were hampering the rescue efforts, Muhari said.

Notably, Tana Toraja has many popular tourist attractions, including a site with traditional houses and wooden statues of bodies buried in the caves, known as tau-tau. Seasonal downpours cause frequent landslides and floods in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or in fertile floodplains.