Papua New Guinea – (AP) — A landslide has struck villages in central Papua New Guinea. Local media reports say 40 bodies have been recovered and 20 people remain missing.

The South Pacific island nation’s National Disaster Center director Martin Mosi says several villages are close to where the landslide occurred early Wednesday near the town of Mendi and that fatalities are likely but unconfirmed.

Local lawmaker Francis Potape told Radio Australia’s indigenous language service that the landslide completely covered two villages while people slept.

Three agents from the Disaster Centre are heading to Mendi today, where they will be flown by helicopter to join police at the site.

PNG media are reporting 40 bodies have been recovered and another 20 people are still missing, with the damage spreading for two kilometres, leaving roads to nearby villages cut off.

One local MP, Francis Potape, told Radio Australia’s Tok Pisin (pidgin) service the landslide completely covered two villages while people slept.

“There are people buried underneath and a number of them are, from what I have heard, children,” the Port Moresby based The National reported Mr Potape as saying.

The Post Courier reports that Prime Minister Peter O’Neill will travel to Tari on Wednesday to visit the site.

ExxonMobil spokeswoman Rebecca Arnold said today the company is in close contact with authorities to help deal with the landslide, which is not expected to hinder the project’s completion in 2014.

The $16 billion LNG project is due to begin production in 2014 and will see PNG’s natural gas sold across Asia for the next 30 years – a plan projected to double PNG’s gross domestic product.
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