Waters from flooded rivers tore through nine villages in Indonesia’s Central Java province, and landslides tumbled onto mountainside hamlets after torrential rains.
Videos and photos released by National Search and Rescue Agency showed workers digging desperately in villages where roads and green-terraced ricefields were transformed into murky brown mud and villages were covered by thick mud, rocks and uprooted trees.
National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said flooding triggered a landslide on Monday that buried two houses and a cafe in the Petungkriyono resort area.
The disasters destroyed 25 houses, a dam and three main bridges connecting villages in Pekalongan city. At least 21 people were killed, 13 injured and nearly 300 were forced to flee to temporary government shelters.
Scores of rescue personnel recovered three mud-caked bodies, including one of a five-month-old baby, as they searched a Petungkriyono area where tonnes of mud and rocks buried two houses and a cafe.
Another body was pulled out from under a broken bridge near a river in Kasimpar village. Rescuers are still searching for five missing people.
Heavy seasonal rain from October to March frequently causes flooding and landslides in Indonesia, an archipelago of 17,000 islands where millions of people live in mountainous areas or near fertile floodplains.