The World - News from April 21, 1989

Dozens of people in Soviet Georgia were missing and feared dead after a small village was flooded when a landslide caused a river to overflow its banks, the official Tass news agency reported. The Tass report, filed by its reporter in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, said that an enormous wall of earth crashed down on the Charukh River and formed a natural dam about 325 feet high and 2,000 feet across, causing a deluge that submerged four houses with about 30 people inside. Only five people were pulled alive from the water and one died a short time later, it said. Two bodies were recovered. A local bus believed to be carrying more than 20 passengers also was swept away, and a search for survivors produced no results, Tass said.