Landslide at Guinea landfill kills at least 30

At least 30 people have been killed in a landslide of waste at a landfill in Conakry, the capital of Guinea.

Authorities say a mountainous heap of refuse collapsed following heavy rain Sunday morning, local time, with the landslide swamping nearby houses.

Authorities say significant material and human resources have been deployed to search for any people who may still be buried.

Thirty people have died in Guinea's capital, Conakry, after a mound of rubbish in a landfill collapsed onto neighbouring homes following heavy rains, the government has said.

Six others were seriously injured in the 2:00am Sunday incident in the Dar-es-salam neighbourhood on the capital's outskirts, a government statement said.

"Significant material and human resources have been deployed to search for any people who may still be buried, to rescue the victims and to recover the bodies," the government of the West African country said.

Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah visited the site of the deadly accident, where AFP photographers saw excavators take part in a search-and-rescue operation through the collapsed landfill under the gaze of a crowd of onlookers.

Measures have been taken "to ensure medical care for the wounded" and "assistance for those affected by this tragedy", the government statement said.

Before the official toll's announcement, neighbourhood leader Lancine Sylla had said he feared that many had died in the collapse.

"We have pulled out 18 bodies that were taken to the morgue," he told AFP.

One of Guinea's main opposition figures, former prime minister Cellou Dalein Diallo, who is in exile abroad, called the accident "a tragedy that plunges us into dismay".

"This tragedy is all the more worrying because the closure of the dump had been announced for this Sunday, August 23," he said on Facebook.

"It is now up to the competent authorities to establish, with full transparency, the circumstances that led to this disaster and to draw all the necessary conclusions," he added in the statement posted before the release of the death toll.

In recent days, the government had ordered the eviction of people around the site because of fears of a collapse.