Ethiopia has declared three days of national mourning after landslides triggered by heavy rain killed at least 80 people in the country’s south, as search crews continued digging through mud in a disaster zone where many more people were still unaccounted for.
The deaths in Gamo Zone have quickly become one of Ethiopia’s deadliest weather disasters in months because they came after days of rain, struck several communities at once and left a large secondary crisis behind them: displaced families, damaged homes and fields, and a recovery effort slowed by more bad weather. Earlier local disaster officials said about 125 people were missing, while later national updates focused on the confirmed death toll and the growing humanitarian needs. The immediate stakes are both practical and painful — recovering bodies, finding survivors if any remain, moving people out of risky ground and deciding how long emergency support will be needed in a region where rains are still falling.
The public timeline began to take shape after a week of intense rainfall in southern Ethiopia. Officials said landslides struck in recent days across parts of Gamo Zone, including the districts of Gacho Baba, Kamba and Bonke. The deadliest known damage was centered in and around Laka Kebele in Gacho Baba Woreda, where mud and debris buried residents, homes and farmland. Mesfin Manuqa, the zone’s disaster response director, said earlier in the week that at least 50 people had been killed and about 125 were missing. By Friday, officials said the death toll had climbed to at least 80. Search operations continued as local residents and rescue teams worked through soaked earth and unstable slopes. One person was pulled out alive from the mud, according to local officials, but the broader operation turned increasingly toward recovery as the number of confirmed dead rose and the chances of finding more survivors appeared to narrow.
Authorities have described a disaster shaped as much by terrain and weather as by the initial collapse itself. Most victims, local officials said, were found buried in mud. Search and recovery efforts were hindered by continuing rain, which made slopes unstable and slowed digging. Regional communications officials said the search for remaining victims had been intensified, but the public record still leaves important questions unanswered. Authorities have not publicly released a full village-by-village death breakdown, a definitive revised missing count or a detailed tally of how many households were destroyed. Those gaps are common in the first days after a landslide disaster, especially in rural areas where roads are poor and information often reaches the capital slowly. Even so, the picture already visible is severe: multiple districts hit, bodies recovered over several days, and families still waiting for news of relatives who disappeared when the ground gave way.
The federal response widened as the scale of the disaster became clearer. Speaker of the House of Peoples’ Representatives Tagesse Chafo said Ethiopia would observe three days of national mourning beginning Saturday. The Government Communication Service said national flags would be lowered and that federal and regional authorities were coordinating relief. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed offered condolences and said the government would continue supporting affected residents while also carrying out studies and preventive work meant to reduce future risk. That language reflected two pressures at once. The first is immediate aid: food, shelter and essential supplies for people who lost homes or can no longer safely stay where they lived. The second is the larger question of whether repeated rainy-season disasters in Ethiopia are being met with long-term planning strong enough to protect communities built on vulnerable slopes and in flood-prone areas.
Regional leaders have also tried to balance mourning with warning. Tilahun Kebede, president of the South Ethiopia Regional State, publicly expressed sorrow for the victims and urged communities in vulnerable highland and flood-prone areas to take precautions because the rainy season is still underway. That warning matters because the disaster is not being treated as a finished event. In practical terms, that means some families are grieving the dead while also being told they may need to leave their land to avoid another slide. Government statements said some communities in high-risk zones were being relocated to safer areas. But officials have not yet publicly said how many people may need to move, where they will go, or how long temporary shelter could last. Those questions will likely shape the next phase of the crisis just as much as the death toll, because in many rural Ethiopian communities land is not only where people live, but how they grow food and support themselves.
The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission added a humanitarian dimension beyond the body count. The commission said 3,461 people had been displaced by the landslides and warned of a severe crisis linked not only to homelessness but also to extensive property damage, including destroyed houses and fields. That description helps explain why the disaster has widened so quickly from a rescue story into a relief story. In many landslide zones, the earth does not only kill. It also wipes out the narrow base of daily life — stored grain, planted land, footpaths, livestock areas and small homes built close to hillsides. When that happens, the crisis does not end when the last victim is found. It becomes a question of how families eat, where they sleep and whether they can return at all. The commission said urgent and coordinated efforts were needed to get essential supplies to the displaced, underscoring that the southern disaster had already become a broader test of state capacity and humanitarian reach.
The geography of the region helps explain why rain can turn deadly so quickly. Southern Ethiopia includes steep terrain, scattered rural settlements and communities linked by roads that can become difficult to use in bad weather. During rainy seasons, saturated ground can fail suddenly, especially in hilly areas where homes and farms sit close to slopes. Mudslides and floods are not rare in Ethiopia, but that does not make them routine for the families they strike. In July 2024, another mudslide in southern Ethiopia killed 229 people, a disaster that remains one of the country’s starkest recent examples of how rain, topography and limited infrastructure can combine into mass casualty events. The new landslides in Gamo Zone do not yet appear to have reached that scale, but the comparison matters because it shows how often southern communities return to the same cycle of warning, collapse, grief and relief appeals once the rains intensify.
The wider regional weather picture has added to official concern. East Africa has been facing heavy rains in multiple countries, and neighboring Kenya has also reported deadly flash floods. The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre said before the season that the March-April-May rains had a 45% chance of being above average across much of the region, including Ethiopia. That forecast does not explain one landslide on one hillside, but it does explain why governments across East Africa have been urging caution and why Ethiopian officials have framed the Gamo tragedy as both a local disaster and part of a larger seasonal danger. It also suggests that the response cannot be limited to digging in one district for a few days. If the rainfall pattern continues, authorities may face more displacement, more slope failures and more pressure to warn or relocate people before other communities are hit.
Public grief has centered on the images and details that usually define landslide disasters: people buried in mud, neighbors searching with their hands, and families waiting while officials release numbers that keep rising. But the political response has shown another layer too. Donations from private citizens and business groups have begun flowing into relief efforts, and national officials have tried to present a united message of condolence and action. That matters because weather disasters often expose public frustration as well as sorrow. When roads are weak, housing is fragile and local warning systems are limited, residents can see a storm as more than bad luck. They can see it as proof that preventable vulnerability has been allowed to harden into normal life. No major public dispute over preparedness has yet defined this case. Still, the government’s repeated promises of both support and preventive study suggest officials understand that mourning alone will not satisfy communities if the same hillsides fail again next season.
For now, the most immediate reality remains the one playing out in the mud. Searchers are still looking for missing people. Families are still trying to identify the dead. Displaced residents are still waiting for shelter and supplies while rain threatens to worsen conditions. The public record has begun to answer the basic questions of what happened and where, but not yet all of the questions that usually matter later: exactly how many remain missing, how many homes were destroyed, whether more relocations are coming, and what permanent changes may follow once the mourning period ends. Those answers often take longer than the headlines do. In Gamo Zone, they will likely determine whether this disaster is remembered only as a tragic week of rain or as another turning point in Ethiopia’s struggle to protect rural communities from repeat climate and terrain shocks.
As of Saturday, March 14, Ethiopia had begun three days of national mourning, at least 80 deaths had been confirmed and thousands of people had been displaced, while search and recovery work continued in the south. The next major milestone is likely to be a fuller official accounting of the missing and the damage, along with any government decision on longer-term relocation or rebuilding for the hardest-hit communities.
Author note: Last updated March 14, 2026.