Sawt Falasteen - Ethiopia mourns victims of landslide tragedy

Mudslides triggered by heavy rain in the tiny locality of Kencho Shacha Gozdi killed at least 257 people, UN humanitarian agency OCHA, citing local authorities, said on Friday, but warned that the toll could reach 500.

It is already the deadliest landslide on record in the Horn of Africa nation with rescuers continuing the grim search for bodies.

Things may yet worsen, the OCHA said.

"As more rain is expected, we should not be surprised to see more of these kinds of emergencies hitting Ethiopia," OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said.

"In that context, we need to sound the alarm on the level of funding available to respond.... international support to humanitarian agencies working in Ethiopia is urgent."

A few kilometres from the hillside that came crashing down on the villagers, distraught families washed the bodies of the victims clawed from the mounds of earth, before wrapping them with shawls ahead of the burial ceremony.

"My heart is filled with joy because I found my wife's body," Ketema Kelsaye, 32, told AFP, his clothes and hands still smudged with mud.

"I wept and searched for five days with shovels and my bare hands in the mud but couldn't find" her body, he said. "Properly burying her has brought relief to my grief."

Ethiopia's parliament announced three days of mourning to start on Saturday.

The period of remembrance would allow "comfort to their relatives and all the people of our country", it said in a statement, shared by the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation.

- Aid operation 'underway' -

The Ethiopian Disaster Risk Management Commission, earlier on Friday, said that humanitarian aid and rehabilitation was "well underway" in the region.

It said a "structure for emergency disaster response coordination and integration" had been established, adding that 6,000 people needed to be relocated.

OCHA had said that more than 15,000 people needed to be evacuated because of the risk of further landslides, including small children and thousands of pregnant women or new mothers.

Aid had begun arriving, it said, including four trucks from the Ethiopian Red Cross Society.

Officials said most of the victims were buried when they rushed to help after a first landslide, which followed heavy rains on Sunday in the area that lies about 480 kilometres (300 miles) from the capital Addis Ababa.

"The bodies recovered on the first day were easily identified because their limbs were intact," 40-year-old Iyasu Zumayunga told AFP on Friday.

"After we dug them out, we washed their faces. Then we asked which families they belonged to."

International offers of condolences have flooded in, including from the African Union, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is Ethiopian.

Africa's second most populous nation is often afflicted by climate-related disasters and more than 21 million people, or about 18 percent of the population, rely on humanitarian aid as a result of conflict, flooding or drought.

strs-rbu-ho/bc

X.Habash--SF-PST