Floods kill 15 people, mostly children, in Papua, Indonesia

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Indonesian authorities said on Tuesday that 15 people, mostly children, were killed after being swept away while crossing a river in the easternmost region of Papua, with the search for eight missing children in another flood-hit village underway. The incident occurred on Saturday in the remote village of Dal in the Nduga region, where heavy rain caused the river to overflow and sweep away 15 people aged between eight and 17, said local police chief Alfredo Agustinus Rumbiak. He added that one body had been recovered and authorities were still searching for the others. Police are still looking for eight children who were swept away by the current on the same day in a similar incident in a nearby village. The children were crossing a different river with their parents when rising waters carried them away, said Rumbiak, adding that the search was hindered by the hilly terrain. Indonesia’s disaster mitigation agency warned residents to prepare for more flooding as heavy rains are expected in various areas of Papua. Rumbiak said the search became more challenging due to the ‘red zone’ status or conflict area in the Nduga region. Papuan separatists have been fighting for independence in the resource-rich region since it was controversially placed under Indonesian control after Dutch rule in a United Nations-supervised vote in 1969. The first site of the landslide was where a separatist group killed dozens of workers building a bridge in 2018.