Death toll rises to 21 after landfill site collapses in Uganda's capital

A vast landfill site in the Ugandan capital has collapsed, killing at least 21 people, the police said on Sunday as the bodycount looks set to rise even further.

Fourteen other people were injured when the Kiteezi landfill, which serves as a waste disposal site for much of Kampala, collapsed late Friday.

At least two of the dead were children, Kampala Capital City Authority said in a statement.

The collapse is believed to have been triggered by heavy rainfall.

The precise details of what happened were unclear, but the city authority said there was a “structural failure in waste mass.”

Kampala Metropolitan Police Spokesperson Patrick Onyango said that they had received 21 bodies of victims from the landfill landslide.

"We are still trying to get in touch with the local authorities, they are giving various figures but as security we have tasked our team to engage the families who lost their beloved ones and also to engage the local community and the local leaders and maybe to get the data from the Uganda Bureau of Statistics to get the actual number of people who were there," he added.

The Kiteezi landfill is on a steep slope in an impoverished part of the city.

Women and children who scavenge plastic waste for income frequently gather there, and some homes have been built close to the landfill.

Kampala authorities for years have considered closing the site and commissioning a larger area outside the city as a waste disposal site.

It was not clear why the plan has failed to take off since 2016.

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni ordered an investigation into the incident, asking in a series of posts on the social platform X why people were living in close proximity to an unstable heap of garbage.