180 dead in mudslide, heavy flooding in Sierra Leone capital

At least 180 people were killed and more than 2,000 left homeless when a mudslide and heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, leaving hospitals struggling to cope.

An AFP journalist at the scene saw bodies being carried away and houses submerged in two areas of the city, where roads were turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses washed up on the streets.

Mohamed Sinneh, a morgue technician at Freetown’s Connaught Hospital, says “at least” 180 bodies had been received so far, many of them children, leaving no space to lay the dead because of the “overwhelming” number of corpses at the facility.

More bodies were taken to private morgues, Sinneh says.

Disaster management official Candy Rogers tells AFP that “over 2,000 people are homeless,” hinting at the huge humanitarian effort that will be required to deal with the fallout of the flooding in one of Africa’s poorest nations.

— AFP