Malaysia landslide kills 16 in orphanage

Malaysian rescuers pulled out more bodies on Sunday from a landslide that smashed into an orphanage near the capital, killing 16 people, mostly children.

Using bare hands and mechanical shovels, search teams rescued nine children from under the layers of muddy earth that partly covered the orphanage that stood in front of a hilly slope on the edge of Kuala Lumpur.

"There were at least 300 people on the ground trying to save the 25 who were buried alive," said a police officer.

The disaster has drawn attention to the rapid urbanisation in the areas surrounding Kuala Lumpur where officials hand out permits to construct buildings on hilly slopes despite concerns over the stability of the soil beneath.

The landslide struck on Saturday afternoon as some of the 44 children at the orphanage, aged between seven and 18 years, took part in a motivational camp. Some managed to escape, barely.

"I shouted to the others to run and in a split second, the earth came tumbling down, burying all my friends," the Star newspaper cited one of the survivors, 14-year-old Mohammad Iman Abdullah, as saying.