Indonesian mine landslide kills 4; 11 missing

A landslide at a gold mine killed four workers and left 11 missing on the Indonesian island of Lombok, a Health Ministry official said Sunday.

At least 20 people were buried under mud and rock on Saturday night, but five managed to get out alive, said Rustam Pakaya, the head of the ministry's Crisis Center.

The slide was triggered by several days of severe rainfall around the village of Buwung Mas Sekotong, about 660 miles (1,060 kilometers) east of the capital, Jakarta, he said.

A lack of heavy digging equipment was hampering the rescue effort, he said.

The latest deaths bring to 18 the number of people killed by flooding and landslides in Indonesia in the past week, officials said.

Fourteen people died in floods elsewhere in the country, 10 of them in the Polowali Mandar region of West Sulawesi province. The four other deaths were in the West Nusatenggara and North Sulawesi provinces.

Indonesia is an archipelago of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas prone to floods during the annual monsoon rains. Dozens dies each year.

In 2007, more than 50 people died in Jakarta when the city was largely submerged in storm waters.