Flashfloods and landslides kill 200 in Sri Lanka

AT LEAST 200 people have died in flash floods and landslides in Sri Lanka, officials said yesterday, as forecasters warned more rain was on the way.

“It is a very grim situation,” rehabilitation minister Jayalath Jayawardene said. “I have been told that at least 200 people have died and still there are people unaccounted for.”

About 150,000 people have fled their homes in the affected areas and are being housed in temples, schools and public buildings. Officials in Ratnapura, Hambabtota and Matara districts said about 100 bodies had been recovered so far. The death toll was expected to rise.

Neighbouring India was sending a rescue helicopter and a relief ship with medicine, food, water and doctors.

The Department of Meteorology warned of new rain. “There will be occasional showers accompanied by fairly strong winds,” it said.

The disaster will have economic impacts because the affected regions include dairy and rice farms that provide staple foods for many Sri Lankans. Most of the region’s crops that were harvested and stored in April were damaged in the floods.

Ratnapura district, famed for its gem mines, is home to one million people.

Local police chief Prasanna Nanayakkara said road links with the capital Colombo had been restored and that water was receding from some areas.

He said about a dozen police teams have been dispatched to remote areas to look for survivors. “It appears that the worst is over for now unless it rains heavily again,” he said.

“Light vehicles can now pass though there are patches where we still have mud and silt.”

The flash floods hit the area late on Saturday, when most residents had come home after celebrating a festival marking the birth of Buddha.

Natural disasters of this magnitude are rare in Sri Lanka, a small tropical island country with 18.6 million people off India’s southern coast.

A cyclone hit the country on May 13, and since then it has been raining heavily in the central and southern parts of Sri Lanka, caused by a tropical depression in the Bay of Bengal.