COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — The death toll in last Friday’s catastrophic collapse of a garbage dump in the Sri Lankan capital mounted to 28 on Monday, and it was expected to increase as rescuers dug for a fourth day through debris that buried part of a residential neighborhood. Thirty people have been reported missing, according to Pradeep Kodippili, the deputy director of Sri Lanka’s disaster management center. An explosion in the dump on Friday afternoon caused a portion of the mound to collapse, sweeping scores of houses off their foundations and burying others, trapping residents inside. Advertisement Continue reading the main storyBut successive governments were unable to find a new home for the dump, and the mountain of garbage grew every year. Engineers had warned for months that the hillside dump was unstable.

Source: New York Times April 17, 2017 09:49 UTC