Death toll from Friday's landslide in Chittagong rose to 17 with the recovery of two more bodies on Saturday when the authorities called off their rescue work.
The joint team of the Fire Service and Civil Defence and the Bangladesh Army recovered the body of Razia Begum, 38, about 2:00am and of Hosneara Begum, 28, about 5:00am.
The deputy commissioner, Fayez Ahmed, said that they had called off search about 8:30am as no more people were missing as the debris had been removed completely.
The Chittagong City Corporation, meanwhile, suspended four of its engineers including superintendent engineer Mokter Ahmed for their alleged neglect of duties and their responsibility for the faulty guide wall erected by the contractor.
Others suspended are executive engineer Abu Saleh, assistant engineer Rafique Uddin Siddiqui and sub-assistant engineer Azazul Haider.
The city corporation also formed a seven-member committee, headed by the ward councillor SM Iqbal Hossain to investigate the incident.
The city corporation's chief executive officer, Dipak Chakrabarty, said that they had also launched a drive to evacuate dwellers from risky houses at the feet of the hills in different areas of the city on Saturday morning.
'A large number of people have been evacuated from Ambagan, Matijhara and Khulshi in the drive,' he said adding that the people had been taken to temporary camps set up in schools.
He also said that they had decided to make a list of the people dwelling at risky slopes of hills, and set up Ansar camps to stop them from returning to the slopes.
A portion of the Batali Hill, along with the guide wall, collapsed on several houses at a slum at Ambagan about 5:00am on Friday in which 17 people were killed and two others were critically wounded.
One hundred and twenty-six people were killed in a series of landslides in different parts of the city on June 11, 2007 while at least 82 others were killed in landslides in a decade.
Source : New Age
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