Landfill collapse kills at least 30 in Guinea's capital days before planned closure

Coverage spread: 5 sources — 1 left · 1 right · 3 international

Lean ratings via AllSides / Media Bias-Fact-Check. How this works.

Where they agree

A landslide at the Dar-es-Salam landfill in Conakry’s Gbessia commune killed at least 30 people and injured 22, six seriously, after heavy overnight rain around 2-3am Sunday.
The collapse buried nearby shacks and homes, and rescuers used excavators and military personnel to search for survivors and bodies.
The government had announced just days before the collapse that it planned to close the dump because of safety concerns.
Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the site to oversee the response, and a similar deadly collapse occurred at the same landfill in 2017.

Where they differ

Fox News, citing the AP, reports the site was actually scheduled to close on the day of the collapse itself, a sharper detail than the Guardian’s framing of a closure “announced” days earlier.
The BBC and Fox News cite different death tolls for the 2017 landslide at the same site — 10 versus at least eight.
Al Jazeera includes political reaction from exiled opposition figure Cellou Dalein Diallo demanding transparency, a voice absent from the other outlets’ coverage.
The Guardian adds broader context on Guinea’s mineral wealth and poverty statistics, while Al Jazeera and the BBC focus more narrowly on the rescue operation and local officials’ accounts.

A massive mound of waste at the Dar-es-Salam landfill in Conakry, Guinea, collapsed onto nearby homes and shacks after heavy overnight rain, killing at least 30 people and injuring 22 others, six of them seriously. The landslide struck around 2-3am on Sunday in the Gbessia commune, just days after the government had announced plans to close the dump because of its dangers.

What exactly happened at the landfill?

Heavy rain soaked the towering pile of refuse at Dar-es-Salam overnight, and around 2am to 3am local time it gave way, burying shacks and, according to one report citing Guinea News, causing a three-story building beneath the waste to cave in. Witnesses described a collapse large enough to swallow an apartment building along with more flimsy dwellings nearby. Rescue teams, including military engineering units, moved in with excavators to dig through the debris, and officials warned the death toll could still climb because people remained buried.

Lancine Sylla, the head of the Dar-es-Salam neighborhood, told AFP that 18 bodies had already been pulled out and taken to the morgue before the government’s final toll of 30 was confirmed. One woman, Cire Diallo, said all five of her children died in the disaster. “I have lost all my children. All I can do is put my trust in God,” she told reporters at the scene.

Why wasn’t the dump already closed?

The timing is a central thread in the coverage. Guinea’s minister of territorial administration and decentralization, Djénabou Touré Camara, had announced just days earlier — on Thursday, according to the Guardian — that the government would shut the landfill and move the waste elsewhere because of the safety risk, particularly during the rainy season. Fox News, citing the Associated Press, reported the site was actually scheduled to close on the very day the collapse occurred, per Lieutenant Colonel Baldé Mamadou Bailo, sanitation officer for the military engineering battalion. Authorities had also issued eviction notices to residents living near the site, but many people were still there when it gave way.

At the scene, Touré said the government would “ensure that the remaining families are relocated elsewhere.” Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the site Sunday to oversee the emergency response and urged people to “remain calm, show solidarity, and strictly follow the instructions of rescue services and the competent authorities.”

Has this happened before?

Yes. The BBC and Fox News, citing Reuters, both note a similar collapse at the same site in 2017 caused by torrential rain, though they give different death tolls for that earlier incident — the BBC says 10 people died, while Fox News says at least eight. Either way, the recurrence has fueled criticism that known risks at the dump were not addressed in time.

How has this landed politically?

Cellou Dalein Diallo, a former prime minister and prominent opposition figure now living in exile, called the disaster “a tragedy that plunges us into dismay” in a Facebook statement reported by Al Jazeera. He pointed out that the closure of the dump had been publicly announced for that very Sunday, and said authorities now need to establish “with full transparency” what led to the disaster. Guinea is currently led by General Mamadi Doumbouya, who seized power in a 2021 coup and was elected president in December 2025.

Why this keeps happening in the region

The disaster fits a broader pattern described by the Guardian: heavy seasonal rains regularly trigger landslides and flash floods in crowded, underdeveloped cities across West Africa. Guinea sits on some of the world’s richest mineral wealth — the largest bauxite reserves globally and a major untapped iron ore deposit at Simandou, where a large-scale mining project launched in November — yet infrastructure remains poor and poverty widespread. A World Bank report from April found 3.7 million of Guinea’s 15.1 million people live on less than $4.20 a day, underscoring the gap between the country’s resource wealth and the conditions many residents live in, including near hazardous waste sites like Dar-es-Salam.

Sources

Featured photo: Mohamed Finando via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Landfill collapse kills at least 30 in Guinea’s capital days before planned closure