---
title: "At least 30 die as a rubbish mountain collapses in Conakry, hours before the dump was to close"
description: "Heavy rain brought down part of Guinea's largest landfill at about 3am on Sunday, burying shacks built beside it. The government had announced the site's closure for the same day."
category: "World"
category_url: https://newsparlor.com/category/world
author: "James Whitmore"
published: 2026-08-23T19:37:14.000Z
updated: 2026-08-23T19:37:14.000Z
canonical: https://newsparlor.com/article/at-least-30-die-as-a-rubbish-mountain-collapses-in-conakry-hours-before-the-dump
tags: ["guinea", "conakry", "disaster", "waste", "west-africa"]
---
# At least 30 die as a rubbish mountain collapses in Conakry, hours before the dump was to close

Heavy rain brought down part of Guinea's largest landfill at about 3am on Sunday, burying shacks built beside it. The government had announced the site's closure for the same day.

At least 30 people were killed when a heap of refuse collapsed at the largest landfill in Conakry, the capital of Guinea, early on Sunday. The figure comes from a government statement, [reported by Al Jazeera](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/landfill-collapse-in-guinea-kills-at-least-22-people-official-says). Six others were seriously injured.

The collapse happened at about 3am local time in the Dar-es-salam neighbourhood of the Bbessia district, after heavy rain triggered a landslide that buried shacks standing beside the tip.

Lancine Sylla, head of the Dar-es-Salaam suburb, told the AFP news agency: "We have pulled out 18 bodies that were taken to the morgue." That count is lower than the government's toll, which is what usually happens in the first hours of a disaster like this one: bodies recovered and bodies known to be under the debris are two different numbers, and the second is an estimate until the digging is finished.

## The closure was set for the same day

The detail that has drawn the sharpest reaction in Guinea is one of timing. The government had already announced that the dump would close on Sunday, August 23, having ordered people living near it to leave because of the risk of exactly this.

Cellou Dalein Diallo, a former prime minister and one of the country's best-known opposition figures, said: "This tragedy is all the more worrying because the closure of the dump had been announced for this Sunday, August 23."

It is a criticism, and it should be read as one. But the underlying fact is not in dispute between the government and its critics. The authorities had identified the site as dangerous and had told residents to move. People were still living there when the slope gave way.

## Why people live next to a tip

They live there because the waste is a livelihood. Around large open dumps in West Africa and elsewhere, informal pickers sort metal, plastic and electronics for resale, and housing grows up at the edge of the site because the walk to work is the whole business model. An eviction order removes the housing, not the income, and so it is very often resisted or simply outlasted.

That is the pattern rather than a claim about these particular residents, whose circumstances the source does not describe.

## What the government says it is doing

The government said in its statement that "significant material and human resources have been deployed to search for any people who may still be buried". Excavators were working through the debris and the prime minister, Amadou Oury Bah, visited the site. The government also pledged medical care for the injured and assistance for those affected.

Guinea has been governed since 2021 by Mamadi Doumbouya, an army officer who took power in a coup and was elected president in December 2025.

## What we could not establish

We could not establish how many people are still missing, how many homes were buried, or whether the closure planned for Sunday was to be immediate or phased. We could not independently confirm the death toll, and we verified this account from a single publication. Where the recovered count and the government toll differ, we have given both rather than choosing between them.

## Sources

- [Landfill collapse in Guinea kills at least 30 people](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/8/23/landfill-collapse-in-guinea-kills-at-least-22-people-official-says)