Sri Lankan troops search for 100 missing after landslides

Aranayaka / AFP

Sri Lankan troops were digging through tonnes of mud on Thursday to search for more than 100 people reported missing after landslides buried two villages, claiming at least 24 lives.
The government vowed to dig “as long as it takes” but hopes were fading of finding survivors in the landslides that hit a mountainous area late Tuesday after days of heavy rains that triggered flooding.
“We are not giving up,” Disaster Management Minister Anura Yapa said in the capital Colombo. “We still consider this a rescue operation and we will dig as long as it takes,” he said. However the minister said nobody had been pulled alive from the landslides since soon after they struck the villages in the tea-growing district of Kegalle, about 100 kilometres northeast of Colombo.
He said about 100 people have since been reported missing, although local police said they have received information of 134 missing from one village alone.
More bodies were recovered on Thursday from one of the destroyed villages, taking the total number killed so far in the landslides to 24.
“We have found seven bodies at Bulathkohupitiya today,” a police officer at the scene said. The recoveries came as Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera appealed for international help after the torrential rains brought flooding to many parts of the island.
Samaraweera said the rains were the heaviest recorded in 24 years and official figures show 300,000 people have been forced to flee to state-run relief camps.