Rescuers resume grim search for dead in flooded Freetown

“Social welfare is out on the streets of Freetown registering and talking to survivors as we try to ascertain exactly how many people are missing”, Abdulai Bayraytay, a spokesman for President Ernest Koroma, told CNN.

“Our prayers are with those who have been affected by this tragedy”.

We must stand with Sierra Leone as they are faced with their next challenge.

“Every family, every ethnic group, every region, is affected by the floods directly or indirectly”, Koroma said.

In areas where they have to excavate bodies from beneath the mud and rubble, they don’t always have the necessary equipment, and Kargbo said frantic relatives arriving on the scene were making the grim task even more hard.

Uhuru congratulated those helping in the rescue mission.

“We have alerted all hospitals so that those rescued can be provided with immediate support on site or be ferried to hospitals”, Bayraytay said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Monday that Israel would send aid to Sierra Leone in the wake of the disaster. According to the NGO, deforestation, lack of urban planning and the country’s vulnerability to climate change are among the main causes of this disaster.

“It’s very hard to paint what the reality looks like, because it’s more scary and very sad and disastrous than anyone can be able to describe”, he said.

At Victor, Vice President of Sierra Leone, confirmed that “hundreds of people probably died in the mud”.

He added: “The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken”.

Deveaux said 297 bodies have been recovered so far, including 109 males, 83 females and 105 children.

Sierra Leonean disaster management official Candy Rogers said that “over 2000 people are homeless” as a result of the mudslide, AFP reported.

Up to 3,000 people are believed to have lost their homes, Tarawallie says.

The International Organization for Migration “is ready to work with Sierra Leone’s government in any capacity it can, to respond to this awful event”, IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said. “Houses are buried and entire families are missing, including children”.

Photographs circulating on social media show bloated corpses floating through the streets on waist-high streams of muddy brown water, while some have had to be recovered from trees after becoming stuck, the New York Times reported.