Sạt lở đất tại Quảng Trị vùi lấp nhiều cán bộ, chiến sĩ

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A landslide in Vietnam on Sunday killed (giết, sát hại) at least 20 military personnel (binh sĩ) and left two missing (mất tích), following weeks of torrential rains (mưa như trút) and flooding that have devastated (tàn phá) parts of the country and killed dozens of people.

The mudslide (lở đất) began in the early hours of Sunday morning and leveled the soldiers’ barracks (doanh trại) in Huong Phung Commune, in the central coastal province of Quang Tri.

...The deaths could be the country’s largest military loss in peacetime (tổn thất quân sự lớn nhất trong thời bình), officials said, and came just days after another landslide killed 13 people, most of whom were also members of the military, in neighboring Thua Thien Hue.

...Rapid development and deforestation (phá rừng) have exacerbated (làm trầm trọng thêm) the damage (thiệt hại) caused by seasonal flooding (lũ theo mùa). Floods in 2018 killed more than 20 people and destroyed hundreds of homes.

“Vietnam has the perfect storm,” Adam Switzer, a sedimentologist (nhà trầm tích học) at the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said of Vietnam’s susceptibility (tính nhạy cảm, dễ xúc cảm, dễ tự ái) to flooding and landslides. “It has seas, rainfall, it has very heavily vegetated steep slopes, and it has seismic (động đất, địa chấn) activity.”