Eight of the people hurt were treated at the scene, the city's main dumping ground for garbage, while the remainder were taken to hospital, a spokesman for Guatemala's national disaster reduction agency, David de Leon, told AFP yesterday.
The municipality said in a statement that around 1,000 informal trash pickers had been in the landfill when part of the mass of refuse shifted and a warning was sounded.
"However, some of the collectors did not hear the call and stayed where they were," it said.