Sierra Leone mudslides: Death toll more than 400
Friday August 18 2017
Men wait beside empty graves for the coffins of mudslide victims on August 17, 2017 at Waterloo cemetery near Freetown, Sierra Leone. AFP PHOTO | SEYLLOU
More than 400 people have died in mudslides and flooding in Sierra Leone with 600 people still missing in the stricken capital Freetown, the Red Cross said Friday.
The disaster began on Monday when heavy rains hit the city and the partial collapse of a hillside triggered mudslides, engulfing homes and wreaking destruction.
"Today we are counting more than 400 people dead," the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, Elhadj As Sy, told reporters in Geneva.
Citizens and experts alike have questioned why the government has not done more to tackle illegal construction and deforestation on the outskirts of the overcrowded capital of Freetown.
An unofficial morgue estimate had previously put the toll at around 400 dead, but the figure had not been confirmed until Friday.
Sy said the government of the West African country was facing a crisis "way beyond (its) capacity" and appealed to the international community to significantly ramp up its support.
The displaced are still sleeping outside "because there are not enough shelters for everybody," he said.
Mass burial
More than 300 victims were buried on Thursday in a ceremony in the nearby town of Waterloo. They were laid to rest alongside victims of the country's last crisis, Ebola. More than 100 of them were children.
President Ernest Bai Koroma and his Liberian counterpart, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, attended the mass burial.
The victims’ bodies, placed in coffins, were ferried in a convoy followed closely by the presidential motorcade.
After prayers from both Christian and Muslim clerics, the bodies were lowered into the graves.
"We will not bury our hopes," President Koroma told mourners. "Sierra Leone will rise again."
The burial of bags filled with body parts had already taken place on Tuesday and Wednesday as government struggles to create room for more bodies at the overwhelmed city morgue in Freetown.
Meanwhile, rescue operation are still ongoing at Mortema village, a small settlement located on the foot of Mount Sugar Loaf, in Regent, the worst-hit area.