School wiped out in Indonesian floods and killed 11 children

Downpours have led to sudden floods and landslides on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, killing at least 22 people, mostly children at a school, and 15 others missing, officials say.

A flood with mud and debris from landslides hit the Mandailing Natal district in North Sumatra province and hit an Islamic school in the village of Muara Saladi, where 21 children were swept away on Friday afternoon, said local police chief Irsan Sinuhaji.

He said that rescuers have taken the bodies of 11 children out of mud and rubble hours later.

Heavy rains caused sudden floods and landslides on the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

AP Photo / Khairul Bazar

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman, Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, said that aid workers were looking for 10 other children who are still missing.

A video from The Associated Press showed family members crying next to their loved ones in a clinic where the bodies of the children were covered with blankets.

Nugroho said that two bodies were found in the early Saturday of a car washed away by flooding in Mandailing Natal, where 17 houses collapsed and five were swept away. Hundreds of other houses were flooded to two meters high, while landslides took place in eight parts of the region.

Four villagers were killed after landslides hit 29 homes and flooded about 100 buildings in the neighboring Sibolga district, Nugroho said.

He said floods also affected several villages in the Tanah Datar district in West Sumatra province where four people were killed, including two children, and three were missing. Landslides and floods in the West Pasaman district have killed a villager and two people missing after 500 houses were flooded and three bridges had collapsed.

Both North and West Sumatra provinces declared a emergency helper period for a week when hundreds of terrified survivors fled their homes on the slopes to safer terrain, fearing that more of the mountain slope would collapse under persistent rain, Nugroho said, adding that dozens of people wounded nearby village were brought hospitals and clinics.

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