'Hundreds dead' in Uganda landslide

More than 50 school pupils were among the hundreds feared dead yesterday after a mud slide partially consumed three villages in a hilly region of Uganda.

With the confirmed death toll at 92, villagers in Nametsi mourned their lost children.

"I have failed to find her or her body," said Beatrice Nabuduwa of her 12-year-old daughter, who did not return home after school when the avalanche hit on Monday. In tears, she said that she "wished God had taken my life instead of my child's".

Rescuers in this remote corner of eastern Uganda used hand tools to dig through the thick rivers of mud that engulfed the hospital and buried worshippers as they prayed in a church. Workers yesterday found the bodies of six more students from the hospital.

President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni visited the villages by helicopter and ordered the remaining residents to move away from the sliding hillsides. Military helicopters were called in to airlift them.

At least four people were plucked alive from the disaster area yesterday, two days after the mud slides began, but more than 250 are still missing.