AT LEAST 40 people were killed and 76 were missing after heavy rains in Indonesia sent tonnes of rubbish from a makeshift dump crashing into homes yesterday.

Police said that a wall of rubbish and mud up to 23ft (7m) high crashed into houses about 800 yards from the dump on the outskirts of the city of Bandung in West Java.

The rains appeared to have brought down piles of rubbish from the dump, which triggered the landslide. Police and soldiers from a nearby army camp were searching through the mud and rubble for more survivors. A police helicopter was helping with the search.

“Those who are missing are buried, and we are trying to find them. We cannot tell how many of them are dead,” Rachmat Sudanto, the police commissioner of West Java, said.

One witness said that two babies were among the dead. Some of the victims’ bodies were wrapped in sheets and laid out inside a nearby building.

Thick piles of rubbish and dirt were blocking the road to two affected villages. Scores of police and soldiers were trying to clear a path to the villages with bulldozers.

Television footage showed police and soldiers pulling apart the wreckage of homes with their hands. Broken rooftops and the shattered, twisted wooden beams of houses were surrounded by mounds of dirt and rubbish. Rescuers feared the effects of more rain. “If it rains again tonight, there can be another landslide and things can get worse,” Mr Sudanto said.

More than 10,000 people were moved out of their homes south of Bandung as the risk of flooding increased.

Landslides are common in other areas of Indonesia. Deforestation across vast areas has been blamed for causing many of them.

Last April 44 people died in a landslide in West Sumatra. Three months earlier a landslide in central Java swept 14 people to their deaths.

In November 2000 floods and landslides set off by torrential rain killed at least 49 people in West Sumatra.

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