312 dead as mudslides, flooding sweep through Sierra Leone capital

At least 312 people were killed and more than 2,000 left homeless when heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone’s capital of Freetown, leaving morgues overflowing and residents desperately searching for loved ones.

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

Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi tells AFP the death toll was 312 but could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown and tally the number of dead.

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

Many more bodies were taken to private morgues, Sinneh says.

— AFP