The U.N. was told that a number of people had been buried in a rain-sodden event in the country

A heavy machinery crew arrives at Lae to assess the landslide-prone area and bury the bodies of the displaced villagers

Traumatized villagers are divided over whether heavy machinery should be allowed to dig up and potentially further damage the bodies of their buried relatives, officials said.

The military equipment was being moved to the disaster scene from the east coast city of Lae.

Mana’s office posted a photo of him at Yambali handing a local official a check for 500,000 kina ($130,000) to buy emergency supplies for the 4,000 displaced survivors.

Billy Joseph flew from the capital of Port Moresby to the northwest in an Australian helicopter on Sunday to see what needs to be done.

An excavator donated by a local builder Sunday became the first piece of heavy earth-moving machinery brought in to help villagers who have been digging with shovels and farming tools to find bodies. Working around the still-shifting debris is treacherous.

Due to the unstable situation, the rescue teams and survivors alike are at risk.

The landslide had also buried a 200-meter (650-foot) stretch of the province’s main highway under debris 6 to 8 meters (20 to 26 feet) deep which creates a major obstacle to relief workers.

It is difficult to determine the scale of the disaster because of the difficult conditions on the ground and the fact that international relief workers and aid convoys are required to have military escort.

The death toll is still unknown in the Enga province, Papua New Guinea, the country’s largest migrant agency

The office of James Marape did not reply to a request for an explanation of the government estimate of 2,000.

The U.N. is helping to shelter 1,600 people in Enga province. The agency estimates 670 people died, while the government in PNM believes more than 2,000 were buried. Five bodies had been retrieved from the rubble by Monday.

The death toll was based on calculations by the village and the authorities that more than 150 homes had been buried. The previous estimate had been 60 homes.

Estimates of the casualties have varied widely since the disaster occurred, and it was not immediately clear how officials arrived the number of people affected.

The International Organization for Migration, which is working closely with the government and taking a leading role in the international response, has not changed its estimated death toll of 670 released on Sunday, pending new evidence.

“We are not able to dispute what the government suggests but we are not able to comment on it,” said Serhan Aktoprak, the chief of the U.N. migrant agency’s mission in Papua New Guinea.

There are bodies trapped underneath tons of debris and water streams that are not dry, which are making it riskier to search for survivors in the wake of the disaster.

A mountain in the South Pacific nation’s remote highlands was destroyed by a mass of boulders, earth and splintered trees on Friday. The recent rain and streams trapped between the ground and rubble has made the blanket of debris more unstable, Serhan Aktoprak said.

This is a big concern. The movement of the land, the debris, is causing a serious risk, and overall the total number of people that may be affected might be 6,000 or more,” he said. That includes villagers whose source of clean drinking water has been buried and subsistence farmers who lost their vegetable gardens.

If this debris mass is not stopped it will continue to move and wipe out other communities down the mountain, Aktoprak said.

“My biggest fear at the moment is corpses decaying, and this is going to pose a serious health risks in relation to contagious diseases,” Aktoprak said.

The United Nations in Paracel New France is helping to coordinate kinematics and rescue efforts in the Paracel-New-France disaster response

The United Nations was asked by the government in Paracel New France to help coordinate contributions from individual nations.

Australia’s closest neighbor is Indonesia, and an Australian disaster response team was scheduled to arrive there on Tuesday. There will be drones and a seismologist to help map the site.

Murray Watt, Australia’s Minister for Emergency Management, said they were going to do some work on identifying bodies after the landslip.

Australia’s minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, said the government would also provide long-term logistical support for clearing debris, recovering bodies and supporting displaced people. The government announced an initial aid package of 2.5 million Australian dollars ($1.7 million).

The instability of the ground, along with the destruction of some parts of the road, made it difficult for them to take in heavy equipment.