JAKARTA (Agencies): A series of rain-triggered landslides and an earthquake in Indonesia's North Sulawesi province killed at least 31 people, officials said Monday.

Authorities fear the death toll on remote islands in the Sangihe chain, 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of the provincial capital Manado, could rise.

"There are at least five people missing," said Soehardjono, chief of the provincial Department of Meteorology and Geophysics.

Soehardjono said at least three landslides hit villages on the islands late Saturday, burying 31 people.

The landslides, which struck on Saturday, were followed by a series of earthquakes that rattled the same area on Sunday. The strongest measured 5.8 on the Richter scale.

The epicenter was located in the Sulawesi sea, Soehardjono said, without giving more details.

He said details of the tragedy remained sketchy and that rescue teams had been dispatched to the islands.

North Sulawesi is about 2,200 kilometers northeast of Jakarta.

Flooding and landslides coinciding with monsoon rains killed more than 200 people in Indonesia at the end of last year.

Government officials and environmentalists say deforestation by timber-cutting logging concerns and villagers needing firewood has contributed to the disasters.

Indonesia, the world's biggest archipelago nation, also is prone to frequent seismic upheavals because it straddles major fault lines. Last May, a quake and a tsunami killed 46 people and left 30,000 homeless in another part of Sulawesi island.