JAKARTA, Jan 15 (Reuters) - A landslide in Indonesia's remote Papua province has killed at least 10 people after heavy rain caused a hillside to collapse onto a complex of houses, a police and a disaster official said on Tuesday. A local police official said that the disaster occurred on Monday afternoon after heavy downpours, combined with strong winds in the area, destabilised the hillside. Rustam Pakaya, head of the health ministry's crisis centre in Jakarta, told Reuters that seven people were also injured and three were still missing. "We have deployed medical teams but we don't know yet how many people have been displaced," Pakaya said. Landslides and floods are frequent in Indonesia, where tropical downpours can quickly soaks hillsides and years of deforestation often mean there is little vegetation to hold the soil. In December more than 100 people were killed after landslides triggered by torrential rain hit central and eastern Java. (Reporting by Fitri Wulandari and Mita Valina Liem; Editing by Ed Davies and Alex Richardson)
People cross a flooded river in Chikwawa district, some 70 km (43 miles) south of Malawis commercial capital Blantyre, January 15, 2008. Floods in southern Africa have displaced thousands of people, ...
