PORT MORESBY — More than 2,000 people have been buried in a Papua New Guinea landslide that destroyed a remote highland village, the government warned Monday as it called for international help in the rescue effort.

The once-bustling hillside village in Enga province was almost wiped out when a chunk of Mount Mungalo collapsed in the early hours of Friday morning, smothering scores of homes and the people sleeping inside them.

"The landslide buried more than 2,000 people alive and caused major destruction to buildings, food gardens and caused major impact on the economic lifeline of the country," Papua New Guinea's national disaster center said in a letter to the UN, which was obtained by Agence France-Presse.

The main highway to the large Porgera gold mine was "completely blocked," it told the UN resident coordinator's office in the capital Port Moresby.

"The situation remains unstable as the landslip continues to shift slowly, posing ongoing danger to both the rescue teams and survivors alike," the disaster center said.

The scale of the catastrophe required "immediate and collaborative actions from all players," it said, including the army, and national and regional responders.

It called on the UN to inform Papua New Guinea's development partners "and other international friends" of the crisis, with relief to be coordinated through the disaster center.

Locals and rescue teams have been using shovels and pieces of wood to find bodies under the landslide — a mix of car-sized boulders, uprooted trees and churned-up earth that is thought to be up to eight meters (26 feet) deep.

'Serious risk'

"The landmass is still sliding, rocks are falling from the mountain," UN migration agency official Serhan Aktoprak told AFP.

Streams of water were flowing between the soil and debris while cracks were appearing in land adjacent to the landslip, Aktoprak said.

"This might trigger a further sliding," the UN official warned, posing a "serious risk" both to rescuers and people living in the area.

Locals said the landslip may have been triggered by heavy rains in recent weeks.

Papua New Guinea has one of the wettest climates in the world, and research has found shifting rainfall patterns linked to climate change could exacerbate the risk of landslides.

Aktoprak said his colleagues had to flee falling rocks at the site at the weekend.

The estimated death toll has been climbing since the disaster struck as officials reassessed the size of the population lying beneath mud and rubble spanning almost four football fields in length.

Five bodies and the leg of a sixth had been pulled from the debris by Saturday night.

"It has been already three days and seven hours since this disaster hit, so basically we are racing against time, but to what extent we might be able to bring people to safety is another issue," Aktoprak said.

More than 1,000 people have been displaced by the catastrophe, aid agencies have estimated. A school teacher from a neighboring village, Jacob Sowai, said more than 2,000 people lived in the disaster zone.

"Nobody escaped. We don't know who died because records are buried," he told AFP.

People from adjoining villages were helping to unearth bodies, said Nickson Pakea, president of the nearby Porgera Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Since the start of the year, the country has experienced multiple earthquakes, floods and landslides, stretching the resources of emergency services.