Five dead, 14 missing in Indonesian landslide

Jakarta: A landslide triggered by days of rain buried a village on Indonesia's main island of Java on Tuesday, leaving at last five people dead and another 14 missing, an official said.

The landslide happened in mountainous Jombang district in eastern Java at 1:30 am (1830 GMT Monday) after a particularly heavy downpour, said local disaster agency official Putra Anugerah.

“We pulled five bodies from the rubble this morning and are still searching for the other 14. Sixty people have also been displaced,” Anugerah told media.

Five homes were completely crushed by the landslide and members of the rescue agency, army personnel and community members were helping search for the missing, officials said.

Indonesia has been pounded with rain in recent weeks, the start of the country's months-long wet season, causing widespread flooding and landslides across the vast archipelago.

Environmentalists blame logging and a failure to reforest denuded land for exacerbating the floods and causing landslides, which hit Java's mountainous regions every wet season.