Malaysian landslide: Body of last missing boy found by rescuers inside sleeping bag

Rescuers also dug up bodies of ‘two children sleeping between the mother and father’ in tent buried under seven metres of mud

Rescuers in Malaysia found the remains of the last remaining missing person – an 11-year-old boy – on Saturday, eight days after the Batang Kali landslide killed 31 people.

Hulu Selangor police chief superintendent Suffian Abdullah said the body of the last victim was found just before 5pm, inside a sleeping bag.

“The victim is estimated to be between seven and 12 years old. His body was fully clothed but had started to decompose,” the news website CNA quoted him as telling reporters.

The body was sent to the Sungai Buloh Hospital after the rescue by the Selangor Fire and Rescue Department in the third worst landslide in Malaysia in the last 30 years.

Selangor Fire and Rescue Department deputy director Wan Md Razali Wan Ismail was quoted as saying by CNA that the body was found in 1.5m deep soil and had to be dug up manually.

The huge mudslide, triggered by heavy rainfall, occured in Batang Kali, a popular hilly area about 50km (31 miles) north of Kuala Lumpur on 16 December. Eight children are among the dead.

According to reports, 94 people were sleeping at the camping site when the landslide occured and covered about three acres.

Rescuers said at that time that people may have found pockets of air among the piles of branches, rocks, and mud.

According to CNA, the authorities said that an embankment of about 450,000 cubic metres of earth collapsed, causing the earth to fall from an estimated height of 30m and cover an area of about 0.4ha.

The South China Morning Post reported that the latest body found was of a year-five pupil at Mun Choong Chinese Primary School in Kuala Lumpur and son of the school’s canteen owner.

A rescuer said “two children sleeping between the mother and father” in a tent buried under seven metres of mud were found among the four bodies recovered on Thursday, the New Straits Times reported.