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Army deployed to clear mudslide-hit Swiss village

Saas-Grund: "Help can't come fast enough".
Saas-Grund: "Help can't come fast enough". Keystone-SDA

On Wednesday, the Swiss army deployed troops to the Upper Valais village of Saas-Grund, an area of which was buried over the weekend by a torrential mudslide.

The main road has been cleared, but piles of material mixed with mud still cover the sidewalks. Dust flies every time a car passes. On either side of the Triftbach, the river that triggered the torrential lava, some cars are barely visible under the mounds of rubble, while the hotel in which a German man lost his life in the basement, taken by surprise by the rapidly rising waters, is still not accessible.

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“The army will be there to help us clear this area as well as to work on the northern part of the Triftbach,” Saas-Grund mayor Bruno Ruppen told news agency Keystone-ATS. He expressed relief that this support has finally arrived four days after the mudslide. “You know, in this kind of situation, help can never come fast enough,” he said.

Translated from French by DeepL/ac

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