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Mass burial planned as search continues for victims
Thomson Reuters
Posted: Aug 15, 2017 6:44 AM ET
Last Updated: Aug 15, 2017 6:44 AM ET
Rescue workers have recovered 270 bodies so far from a mudslide on the outskirts of Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown and the search continues for more, the mayor said on Tuesday.
Dozens of houses were covered in mud when a mountainside collapsed in the town of Regent on Monday morning in one of the deadliest natural disasters in Africa in recent years.
“We have a total of 270 corpses which we are now preparing for burial,” Sam Gibson told reporters outside city hall.
A mass burial Tuesday will free up space for more bodies in the central morgue, which is overloaded, a Reuters witness said.
President Ernest Bai Koroma urged residents of Regent and other flooded areas around Freetown to leave immediately so that military personnel and other rescue workers could continue to search for survivors that might be buried underneath debris.
Rescue centres have been set up around the capital to register and assist victims, he said in a television address on Monday evening.
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