Death toll in Sierra Leone flood disaster reaches 441

Men carry coffins of mudslide victims at the Waterloo cemetery near Freetown, Sierra Leone on Aug 17, 2017.

PHOTO: AFP

GENEVA (AFP) - The death toll from a mudslide and flooding that struck Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has reached 441, the government said on Saturday (Aug 19).

"Four hundred and forty-one corpses (were) buried as at yesterday," the deputy minister of information and communication, Cornelius Deveaux, told AFP, adding that the number of missing was "still being calculated."

A tally of deaths, issued on Friday by the Red Cross, stood at more than 400, with around 600 others listed as missing.

At Connaught Hospital, morgue worker Mohamed Sinneh Kamara gave a slightly higher toll than the minister's.

"We buried 50 more bodies on Friday. We have so far buried 450 corpses," he told AFP. "Most of the bodies were found decomposed and families were not allowed to identify (them)."

He added: "We're receiving calls from disaster-hit communities every three to four hours about a corpse found in a drainage or under a collapsed building."

Three more bodies were found in a search for survivors in the Regent district, where the side of a hill collapsed, the emergency services said.

The disaster struck on Monday after Freetown, home to 1.2 million people and the capital of one of the world's poorest countries, had been pounded for three days by torrential rain.

According to the charity Save the Children, the disaster killed 122 children and left 123 orphaned.

The Red Cross has issued an emergency funding appeal. Britain, the former colonial power in Sierra Leone, has pledged £5 million (S$8.7 million), while China has pledged US$1 million (S$1.3 million) and Togo US$500,000.

Water-borne diseases such as cholera and malaria are a major fear.

Flooding is an annual menace in Sierra Leone, where ramshackle homes are regularly swept away by seasonal rains. In 2015, floods killed 10 people and left thousands homeless.

See more on

Sierra Leone

Natural disasters