 At least 500 dead, 810 missing in Sierra Leone disaster Freetown (AFP) Aug 24, 2017 - The death toll from the flood and mudslide disaster that struck Sierra Leone's capital in mid-August now exceeds 500 and 810 people are listed as missing, the government said Thursday. "The death toll has risen slightly above 500," Vice President Victor Bockarie Foh said at a ceremony to receive relief supplies provided by Japan. Separately, government spokesman Abdulai Bayratay said 810 people were listed as missing, a figure that concurs with estimates by NGOs in the past few days. The city of Freetown -- capital of one of the world's poorest countries -- was struck by devastating floods and a mudslide on the night of August 13-14. The previous toll, given by the city's central morgue, stood at 499 dead, 156 of them children. Vandy Rogers, a senior official with the country's national emergency services, said the number of people who had been "directly affected" by the disaster was around 6,000. On Tuesday, the authorities warned tourists and locals against swimming in Freetown's waters after 60 bodies washed up. Baratay said soldiers, supported by forensic experts from Spain, would continue to search for those missing, "as most families want bodies of their loved ones (to) be evacuated and given a dignified burial." The location of the mudslide would later be turned into a memorial, he said. The disaster was preceded by torrential rain that saturated the soil and left vulnerable slopes liable to collapse, the interim head of the Sierra Leone Institution of Geoscientists, Solomon Tucker, said.
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The death toll from floods sweeping South Asia has climbed above 1,000, officials said Thursday, as rescue teams try to reach millions stranded by the region's worst monsoon disaster in recent years.
Thousands of soldiers and emergency personnel have been deployed across India, Bangladesh and Nepal, where authorities say a total of 1,013 bodies have been recovered since August 10 when intense rainfall started falling.
All three countries suffer frequent flooding during the monsoon rains, but the Red Cross has termed the latest disaster the worst in decades in some parts of South Asia.
It says entire communities have been cut off and many are short of food and clean water.
"It has been a difficult year," said Anil Shekhawat, spokesman for India's national disaster response force.
"In the last few months there have been floods in western, eastern and northern parts of the country," Shekhawat told AFP.
Twenty-six bodies were found Wednesday in Bihar, a hard-hit state in India's east, taking the death toll there to 367, said Anirudh Kumar, a top state disaster management official.
"We still have nearly 11 million people affected in 19 districts of the state," he told AFP, adding nearly 450,000 flood evacuees had taken shelter in government refuges.
In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, floods have swamped nearly half the vast state of 220 million, India's most populous.
Disaster management agency spokesman T.P. Gupta said 86 people had died and more than two million were affected by the disaster there.
The state borders Nepal, where 146 people have died and 80,000 homes destroyed in what the United Nations is calling the worst flooding in 15 years.
Nepal's home ministry warned the death toll could rise as relief teams reach more remote parts of the impoverished country.
- Widespread destruction -
In India's northwest, landslides caused by heavy rain have claimed 54 lives, the vast majority in one huge avalanche of mud that swept two buses off a mountainside.
The situation was slowly easing in West Bengal and Assam, two states in India's east and northeast where 223 people have died.
Floods in Assam -- the second wave to hit the state in less than four months -- have wrought widespread destruction, killing 71 people and forcing animals in a local wildlife sanctuary to seek higher ground.
One Bengal tiger and 15 rare one-horned rhinos were found dead and conservationists feared there could be further loss of life as poachers sought to capitalise on the exodus.
In the low-lying state of West Bengal, where 152 people have died, hundreds of thousands have escaped submerged villages by boats and makeshift rafts to reach government aid stations.
Across the border in Bangladesh, water levels were slowly returning to normal in the main Brahmaputra and Ganges rivers.
The government's disaster response body said Thursday the death toll stood at 137, with more than 7.5 million affected since flooding hit the riverine nation.
Every year hundreds die in landslides and floods during the monsoon season that hits India's southern tip in early June and sweeps across the South Asia region for four months.
Last year nearly 1,500 people died and half a million homes were destroyed in floods across the country, according to India's home ministry.
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