GUATEMALA CITY,Guatemala (AFP) — A collapsing pile of refuse in a landfill in Guatemala’s capital on Wednesday killed four people picking through the trash and injured 15 others, emergency officials said.
Eight of the people hurt were treated at the scene, the city’s main dumping ground for garbage, while the remainder were taken to hospital, a spokesman for Guatemala’s national disaster reduction agency, David de Leon, told AFP.
The municipality said in a statement that around 1,000 informal trash pickers had been in the landfill when part of the mass of refuse shifted and a warning was sounded.
“However, some of the collectors did not hear the call and stayed where they were,” it said.
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