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.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
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.
-
Music reviews: Laufey, Deftones, and Earl SweatshirtFeature "A Matter of Time," "Private Music," and "Live Laugh Love"
-
'What's profitable today is not unification. It's segmentation.'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
GPT-5: Not quite ready to take over the worldFeature OpenAI rolls back its GPT-5 model after a poorly received launch
-
China is silently expanding its influence in American citiesUnder the Radar New York City and San Francisco, among others, have reportedly been targeted
-
How China uses 'dark fleets' to circumvent trade sanctionsThe Explainer The fleets are used to smuggle goods like oil and fish
-
One year after mass protests, why are Kenyans taking to the streets again?today's big question More than 60 protesters died during demonstrations in 2024
-
What happens if tensions between India and Pakistan boil over?TODAY'S BIG QUESTION As the two nuclear-armed neighbors rattle their sabers in the wake of a terrorist attack on the contested Kashmir region, experts worry that the worst might be yet to come
-
Why Russia removed the Taliban's terrorist designationThe Explainer Russia had designated the Taliban as a terrorist group over 20 years ago
-
Inside the Israel-Turkey geopolitical dance across SyriaTHE EXPLAINER As Syria struggles in the wake of the Assad regime's collapse, its neighbors are carefully coordinating to avoid potential military confrontations
-
'Like a sound from hell': Serbia and sonic weaponsThe Explainer Half a million people sign petition alleging Serbian police used an illegal 'sound cannon' to disrupt anti-government protests
-
The arrest of the Philippines' former president leaves the country's drug war in disarrayIn the Spotlight Rodrigo Duterte was arrested by the ICC earlier this month
