Police look for owners of 7 vehicles at tragedy site

 

Registration records of seven vehicles at the landslide scene are being checked by police to identify possible victims. (Bernama pic)

BATANG KALI: Police are trying to locate the owners of seven vehicles found at the landslide area here, to see if they are among the victims of the campsite tragedy.

So far, 11 bodies have been dug up at the three campsites at Father’s Organic Farm which were destroyed in the landslide on Friday.

The bodies were dug up through the use of excavators deployed at the site. Nine people are still missing, while 24 are known to have died.

Hulu Selangor police chief Suffian Abdullah said the manual search by search and rescue teams have yet to locate any of the remaining victims.

The authorities were trying to identify victims through the registration records of several vehicles still at the scene.

“We have taken their registration numbers and checks are under way. We have to crosscheck, to determine the owners and see if they need to be added into the list of victims,” he said.

Search efforts were suspended at about 5pm because of the rain but have resumed, said Selangor fire and rescue department director Norazam Khamis.

Work would continue into the night, depending on weather conditions, he said. “At around 3 or 4am, we will stop to give the excavator operators time to rest and they will resume tomorrow morning at 8am.”

He said three search methods were used today: excavators, K9 units and ground penetrating radar.

The radar devices detected potential signs of buried bodies, however no bodies were found when the site was dug up. “It’s possible that the devices picked up other objects beneath the earth,” he said. - FMT