50 Die as Landslide Buries Soviet Village
A landslide buried eight houses and killed at least 50 people in a mountain village in the Soviet Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, news reports said Sunday.
Fearing more landslides, authorities evacuated 400 nearby residents after the disaster Saturday in Chigiristan, near the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, 1,900 miles southeast of Moscow.
So much earth was covering the homes that the government of the southern Soviet republic declared it a common grave and did not try to excavate the dead, the Interfax news agency said.
The official Soviet news agency Tass said more than 50 people were killed. Interfax put the death toll at 64.
The landslide was the second major natural catastrophe to hit the Soviet Union within a week. At least 114 people died in an earthquake that struck Soviet Georgia on April 29, smashing homes and setting off landslides in that southern republic, 1,250 miles west of Tashkent.
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