18 people were killed in a landslide on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi

TANA TORAJA, Indonesia (AP) – Search and rescue teams have found 18 people killed in a landslide on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi and are still searching for two people who are still missing, officials said.

Rescuers found about 14 bodies in Makale village and four in Makale South on Sunday afternoon, said Makasar search and rescue chief Mexianus Bekabel.

“We are still searching for the two victims, but fog and rain have hampered the search and overwhelmed officers in the field,” Thana Toraja District Emergency Management Agency chief Sulaiman Malia said on Monday.

Torrential rain fell around midnight on Saturday in the Tana Toraja district of South Sulawesi province, sending mud from the surrounding hills onto four houses, local police chief Gunardi Mundu said. According to him, a family meeting was taking place in one of the houses at the time of the landslide.

Dozens of soldiers, police and volunteers have joined the search in the remote hillside villages of Makale and South Makale, Mundu said. On Sunday morning, rescuers took out two injured people, including an 8-year-old girl, and took them to a nearby hospital.

According to Mukhari, communication lines, bad weather and unstable soil hampered the rescue efforts.

Tana Toraja has many popular tourist attractions, including traditional houses and wooden sculptures of bodies buried in caves known as tau-tau.

Seasonal rains often trigger landslides and floods in Indonesia, a chain of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or fertile floodplains.

Associated Press