Admin l Thursday, August 17, 2017
FREETOWN, Sierra Leone – President Bai Koroma of Sierra Leone has declared seven days of mourning following the death of over 1000 people in a mudslide on the outskirts of Freetown.
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Many houses in the hilltop community of Regent were flushed down when part of Sugar Loaf mountain collapsed following heavy rain on Monday.
Many victims were fast asleep when the heavy flood turned their homes into ruins. Among those dead were children.
The President has also called for support in clearing up the mess even as over 600 people are still missing. But health officials say about 400 people who died during the incident have been buried.
The burials involved people who had already been identified or whose bodies were badly decomposed, Freetown’s chief pathologist Dr Simeon Owizz Koroma said.
We gathered that most of those dead were buried in a mass grave in Waterloo known as the Ebola cemetery after the 2014 disease outbreak, which killed nearly 4,000 people in the country.
Volunteers said there were more bodies inside the mortuary that urgently needed to be buried because they had decomposed.
