Hundreds killed by Sierra Leone mudslide and flooding

At least 400 people have been killed and an estimated 600 are missing after a mudslide and flooding engulfed an area on the outskirts of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown.

President Ernest Bai Koroma pleaded for "urgent support", saying "entire communities had been wiped out," the BBC says.

"The magnitude of the destruction as a result of the disaster is such that the number of victims in the community who may not come out alive may likely exceed the number of dead bodies already recovered," a local resident told the Washington Post.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

ABC News reports that the city's central morgue was "unable to accommodate all the bodies as victims continued to arrive".

"Our problem here is space. We are trying to separate, quantify, and examine quickly and then we will issue death certificates before the burial," morgue head Owiz Koroma said.

Aid workers are reporting extremely difficult conditions as rescue efforts continue for the estimated 600 people still missing since the incident.

"We have the mountains and very steep hillsides. [It's very hard to] access these areas, where it's muddy, it's slippery – there's a risk of a second landslide," UN worker Linnea Van Wagenen told The Guardian. "We're not sure how this massive landslide has affected the ground around it."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry reported that it had delivered 10,000 meals to Sierra Leone and is also planning to send medical aid.