The death toll from landslides triggered by days of heavy rain in southern Ethiopia rose to 125 on Monday, as officials said more than 11,000 people had been displaced and recovery crews kept searching unstable ground in Gamo Zone.
The disaster has widened from a local rescue effort into a major humanitarian emergency in one of Ethiopia’s most vulnerable highland regions. Federal and regional authorities declared a three-day mourning period, lowered flags and promised relief, but several critical details remained unsettled by Monday, including a revised missing count, a full tally of destroyed homes and farms, and how many families may need to be moved before more rain arrives.
The first public accounts of the disaster emerged after a week of heavy rain in southern Ethiopia. Local officials said landslides struck late Tuesday, March 10, and continued into Wednesday across parts of Gamo Zone. Early reports identified the hardest-hit districts as Gacho Baba, Kamba and Bonke, where mud and debris swept over homes and farmland. Mesfin Manuqa, the zone’s disaster response director, said on Thursday that at least 50 people had been killed and 125 others were missing. He also said one person had been pulled alive from the mud during the search. Abebe Agena, communications chief for Gacho Baba district, said most victims were found buried under mud, an early sign of how quickly the hillsides had failed. Regional President Tilahun Kebede warned that more rain could bring more danger, saying the season was still underway and that communities in highland and flood-prone areas faced continuing risk.
By Friday, the confirmed death toll had climbed to 80 as searchers kept working through soaked earth and unstable slopes. National authorities responded by announcing a three-day mourning period beginning Saturday, March 14, with flags ordered to fly at half-staff, including at Ethiopian diplomatic missions abroad. Speaker of the House of Peoples’ Representatives Tagesse Chafo publicly announced the mourning period as the federal government widened its response. The Government Communication Service said federal and regional authorities were coordinating relief and mobilizing resources for affected communities. On Monday, Reuters reported that the South Ethiopia regional government had raised the toll again, to 125 dead, and said displacement had passed 11,000 people. That update sharply increased the scale of the crisis from the figures released only days earlier. It also left open another key question: officials had not publicly issued a fully revised tally of how many people were still missing.
The humanitarian picture has worsened as the numbers have grown. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said Friday that 3,461 people had been displaced, warning that survivors were facing a severe crisis after homes and fields were destroyed. A later regional government update pushed the displacement count much higher. Ethiopian outlet reporting that summarized the commission’s statement said six kebeles across Gacho Baba, Bonke, Kamba Zuria and West Abaya were affected, with the worst destruction centered in Laka Kebele, where households were buried while residents slept. Those details helped explain why the emergency moved so quickly beyond body recovery and into a longer relief effort. For many families in rural southern Ethiopia, the loss was not only of shelter but of farmland, stored food and the narrow local paths that connect villages to markets, clinics and schools. Aid needs now include food, temporary shelter, clean water, trauma care and protection for children, older people and people with disabilities.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed visited the disaster area on Saturday, according to Reuters, and pledged government support to residents as the scale of the damage became clearer. The flow of official statements since then has reflected two pressures at once: public mourning for the dead and a push to show that the state can still reach isolated communities cut off by rain and broken terrain. Donations from private citizens and business groups began flowing into a relief fund announced by regional authorities. The World Health Organization also signaled readiness to support the government’s health response. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general, said he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life” and said emergency health services were being prepared for survivors. That offer underscored the risk that disasters of this kind do not end with the landslide itself. Once roads are damaged and families are displaced, officials also have to manage injury treatment, sanitation problems and the threat of disease in crowded temporary shelter sites.
The terrain of Gamo Zone helps explain why heavy rain can become deadly so fast. Much of southern Ethiopia is defined by steep slopes, scattered rural settlements and roads that can become difficult or unusable in bad weather. Saturated hillsides can collapse with little warning, and homes and farms are often built close to exposed ground because families live where land is available and productive. Ethiopia has seen this pattern before. In July 2024, another mudslide in southern Ethiopia killed 229 people, one of the country’s deadliest recent weather disasters. That earlier catastrophe remains an important measure of the danger posed by repeated rainy-season shocks in the south. The new landslides in Gamo Zone did not initially appear to match that earlier toll, but the latest rise to 125 deaths showed how quickly casualty counts can change as remote communities are reached, bodies are recovered and regional officials gather fuller information from the field.
The broader regional weather outlook has added to official concern. East Africa has been dealing with heavy seasonal rain, and forecasters had already warned that the March-April-May rainy season could run above average across much of the region. The IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre said last month that there was a 45% chance of above-average rainfall across a wide area that included Ethiopia. Forecasts cannot predict the collapse of one hillside in one village, but they do shape government planning and public warnings. In this case, they help explain why Ethiopian authorities have treated the Gamo disaster not as a closed event but as a continuing threat. The concern is not only about those already killed or displaced. It is also about whether more slopes may fail, whether roads will stay open long enough for aid deliveries, and whether communities on vulnerable ground can be moved before another round of rain turns one disaster into several.
As the response shifts from immediate rescue to sustained relief, the next steps are administrative, humanitarian and political rather than criminal. By Monday, no authority had released a final damage assessment, a complete household loss count or a public timetable for long-term rebuilding. Officials also had not set out how many people might need permanent relocation, where those families would go or how long emergency shelter could last. Search and recovery operations were still underway, and some statements indicated they would continue until the missing were fully accounted for. The three-day mourning period that began Saturday was set to conclude Monday, but the end of mourning does not end the emergency. The next major milestone is likely to be a fuller federal or regional accounting of deaths, missing people, damaged homes and farmland, followed by decisions on relocation, reconstruction and slope-risk prevention. Those choices will shape whether Gamo’s hardest-hit communities can return home or must begin again somewhere else.
Images distributed from Gacho Baba district showed residents packed onto wet, brown slopes, digging through churned earth by hand as local teams searched beside them. The visual record matched what officials had been describing for days: a disaster of mud, silence and waiting, where families stood near the ruins of homes hoping for names, bodies or any sign of the missing. Agena said most of the victims were recovered from the mud itself, a grim detail that captured how little time many residents had to escape. Even the one reported rescue, the person pulled out alive, stood out because it was so rare. In villages where land is both home and livelihood, the loss is measured in more than bodies. It is also counted in buried grain, destroyed plots, broken footpaths and the sudden absence of the small routines that hold rural life together. For survivors, the emergency now stretches past the landslide into the uncertain weeks ahead.
As Monday ended, the latest confirmed toll stood at 125 dead, while search teams were still working and thousands of people remained displaced across southern Ethiopia. The next public test for officials will be a fuller damage report and a clear decision on whether more hillside communities must move before the rains deepen.
Author note: Last updated March 16, 2026.