At least 48 people, 15 of them children, were killed in a landslide at a huge garbage dump on the outskirts of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, the city's spokesman said on Monday.

Hundreds of people live on the 50-year-old Reppi dump, the city's only landfill site, scavenging for food and items they can sell such as recyclable metal.

Efforts are still under way to find people still missing since the landslide late on Saturday which destroyed 49 dwellings, city spokesman Amare Mekonen said. Twenty-eight people were being treated in hospital.

"In a bid to prevent such things happening again, people who were living in this area have now been taken to youth centres in other parts of the city," he said.