At least 34 people were killed when a mountain of refuse collapsed in Guinea’s capital on Sunday, August 23, 2026, burying the shacks packed against its base and pinning residents beneath tons of garbage.
The site that failed, Dar Es Salam, is the largest waste site in Conakry, the seaside capital of the West African nation. As the dump swelled year by year, informal housing pushed right up to its edges — a pattern common in cities where scavengers make a living sorting through material that has been discarded.
The sliding waste flattened several homes and caved in a three-story building at the foot of the mound. Search teams then went through the wreckage looking for survivors. Of the 22 people hurt, six were badly injured and 16 had light injuries, according to a government statement issued on August 24.
Among those at the site was Cire Diallo, a woman who told reporters that her five children were killed. “I have lost all my children. All I can do is put my trust in God,” she said.
About 3 a.m. was when the slope let go. Rain falling through the night had waterlogged the refuse, according to authorities, and the landfill had been left dangerously unstable.
A collapse that fell in stages onto would-be rescuers was recounted by an eyewitness, Robert Kamano Sâa, who said it was the second one. “The first section gave way. People tried to come to the rescue, shouting, ‘Is there anyone down there?’… That was when the second section collapsed in three successive stages, cascading down. And that is what poured onto the people.”
Photographers captured staff with ANGUCH, the government body charged with handling emergencies and humanitarian disasters, at work on the shifting slope of garbage. In the hours after the slide, residents whose homes stood nearby were seen carrying away what they could.
Excavators were digging through the collapsed landfill on August 23 when Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah came to see the site. Measures had been taken “to ensure medical care for the wounded” and “assistance for those affected by this tragedy,” the government said.
A Landfill Already Marked for Closure
One plain detail makes the grief harder to bear: by the time the waste gave way, the site was supposed to be out of service altogether. Lt. Col. Baldé Mamadou Bailo, who oversees sanitation for the army’s engineering battalion, said officials had warned about hazardous conditions at the dump and had originally scheduled it to close on Sunday, August 23.
Safety concerns had been raised by something that happened at the dump in recent years, and that earlier incident lay behind the order. As a precaution, officials had also served eviction notices on residents living beside the landfill, requiring them to leave.
Those notices did not empty the neighborhood. Plenty of people were still in the immediate vicinity when the waste came down, because for families with nowhere else to go the dump has long been both a hazard and a livelihood.
Dienabou Touré, Guinea’s minister of territorial administration and decentralization, said at the scene: “We will ensure that the remaining families are relocated elsewhere.”
A package of emergency measures followed on August 25. The government said the Dar Es Salam landfill would be demolished completely, that mixed teams would be deployed to identify and register at-risk homes beside it, that the health ministry would mount a medical response, and that new sites would be sought to rehouse those displaced.
Echoes of a Mudslide in 2017
This landfill has killed before. Torrential rains touched off a mudslide at the site in 2017 in which nine people died, and warnings about the stability of the ever-growing pile were fed by that episode for years afterward.
The danger heavy rain poses to waste sites like Dar Es Salam is well documented. Loosely packed layers of trash take in water, and as the material turns heavier and more slippery the slope eventually gives way — usually with enormous force and almost no warning. Downpours persist through Conakry’s rainy season, which makes the risk both seasonal and recurring.
Monday, August 24, brought no change to the government’s figure of 30, which still stood as Guinea’s Ministry of Territorial Administration and Decentralization said several people remained unaccounted for and that the death toll was expected to rise as search operations continued. It did: on Tuesday, August 25, Health Minister Khaité Sall put the toll at 34 dead and 33 injured, six of them seriously, and said several Sierra Leoneans were among the victims. Rehousing was planned for about 1,500 families. Rescue teams got support from military personnel and heavy machinery as heavy rain kept falling.
For the surrounding community, the questions now are practical and urgent. Where displaced families will sleep is one; how the destroyed homes will be replaced is another. And for families who lived, until that morning, in the shadow of the city’s biggest dump, there is the closure that was supposed to take effect on Sunday, August 23 — will it now be enforced?