Frantic search as mudslide death toll goes past 300

SIERRA LEONE: More than 300 people have been killed after a mudslide and heavy flooding in Sierra Leone.

Relatives were left digging through mud in search of their loved ones, as a mortuary in the capital of Freetown was overwhelmed with bodies.

Houses were submerged in mud after a night of heavy rain that saw a hillside in the Regent area collapse, with roads described by witnesses as being turned into ‘‘churning rivers of mud’’.

Adama Kamara wept as she described failing to rescue her seven-week-old child. ‘‘We were inside when we heard the mudslide approaching. I attempted to grab my baby but the mud was too fast. She was covered alive,’’ said Kamara. She was not sure what had happened to her husband.

A man said he had left early in the morning to buy bread. When he returned, his wife, children, siblings and in-laws were all dead.

Speaking at the scene, Sierra Leone’s vice president Victor Foh said: ‘‘It is likely that hundreds are lying dead underneath the rubble.’’

He added: ‘‘The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken. We’re trying to cordon [off] the area [and] evacuate the people.’’

People cried as they looked at the damage under steady rain, gesturing towards a muddy hillside where dozens of houses used to stand.

Sinneh Kamara, a coroner technician at the Connaught hospital, said the number of those killed had overwhelmed the facility.

Sierra Leone’s national television broadcaster interrupted its regular programming to show scenes of people trying to retrieve the bodies of loved ones. Others were seen carrying relatives’ remains in rice sacks to the mortuary.

Military personnel have been deployed to help in the rescue operation in the West African country.

The scale of the human cost of the floods was only becoming clear yesterday afternoon, as images of battered corpses piled on top of each other circulated and residents spoke of their struggles to cope with the destruction and find their loved ones.

– Telegraph Group

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