Local residents were desperately searching for survivors on Tuesday after a landslide in a remote area of southern Ethiopia killed around 150 people, the deadliest such disaster recorded in the Horn of Africa nation, reports AFP.

Crowds of people were gathered at the site of the tragedy, some clawing through the mud with shovels or their bare hands, according to images posted on social media by the local authority.

The government-owned Ethiopia Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) said 157 people had died in the landslide in the Geze-Gofa district in an isolated mountainous region in the South Ethiopia regional state.

Five people had been pulled alive from the mud and were receiving treatment at medical facilities, the EBC reported.