Authorities said that five children were among the 21 people killed in the Malaysian campground landslide as rescuers searched muddy terrain for survivors and the dead on Saturday.
After a daybreak avalanche destroyed a tent at an organic farm on Friday near the town of Batang Kali, just outside the capital Kuala Lumpur, twelve people were still unaccounted for.
The majority of the more than 90 guests in the campsite near a mountain casino resort at the time of the landslide, according to officials, were asleep.
Authorities said that 61 people had been saved or found safe.
In a statement to reporters on Friday, Norazam Khamis, the director of the Selangor state fire and rescue department, said that two of the deaths were “believed to be a mother and her kid in a condition of embrace buried in the soil.”
Authorities said that the farm’s owners would be punished if it turned out that they had broken the law by running a campground without a license.
Late on Friday, Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim went to the site and promised to help the relatives of the survivors with money.
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Amirudin Shari, the chief minister of Selangor state, announced via Twitter that the state’s picnic and camping areas would be closed for a full week.
Malaysia experiences strong rainfall frequently at the end of the year, which can result in landslides. Bad weather can also cause landslides.
However, the neighbourhood did not get any significant rainfall the night of the accident.
The government has imposed stringent regulations on hillside development.
In March, heavy rains caused a large landslide that buried the homes of four people in a suburb of Kuala Lumpur.
One of the deadliest of these instances occurred in 1993, when a 12-story residential structure outside of the city collapsed due to a massive mudslide triggered by torrential rain, killing 48 people.
