Death toll reaches 69 as Sri Lanka is hit by rising flood waters | Sri Lanka
As troops in Sri Lanka raced to rescue hundreds of people trapped by rising floodwaters on Friday, weather-related deaths rose to 69 and 34 people were reported missing.
Helicopters and navy boats carried out rescue operations by collecting people from treetops, rooftops and villages cut off by flood waters.
The Disaster Management Center (DMC) said the death toll rose with more bodies being found in the worst-hit central region, where most of the victims were buried alive due to landslides this week.
DMC said it was raining across the island, with some areas receiving 360 mm of rainfall in the last 24 hours. The Kelani River, which flows into the Indian Ocean near the capital Colombo, overflowed on Friday.
VSA Ratnayake, 56, said he had to leave his flooded home in Kaduwela near Colombo. “I think this could be the worst flood our region has seen in the last three decades,” Ratnayake said. “I remember a flood in the 1990s when my house was under 8 feet of water.”
Kalyani, 48, also from Kaduwela, said she was hosting two families whose houses were flooded.
At least 3,000 homes were damaged by landslides and floods and more than 18,000 people were moved to temporary shelters. In the northern Anuradhapura district, a Bell 212 helicopter took off a man who climbed a coconut tree to escape rising waters.
More rain is expected and Cyclone Ditwah is likely to move from the north towards the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu by Sunday, the DMC said.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed his condolences for the loss of life in Sri Lanka and said that Delhi was urgently delivering aid to the affected areas. “We are ready to provide further assistance and support as the situation evolves,” Modi told X.
DMC officials said they expected flood levels to be worse than in 2016, when 71 people died across the country. Dozens of stranded tourists were evacuated from the central tea-growing regions to Colombo on Friday.
Sirasa TV network broadcast a desperate woman’s call for help. “There are six of us, including a one-and-a-half-year-old child. If the water goes up five more steps, we will have nowhere to go,” he said by phone.
DMC said Sri Lanka is in the northeast monsoon season but rainfall has intensified due to Cyclone Ditwah.
Sri Lanka depends on seasonal monsoon rains for irrigation and hydropower, but experts warn the country faces more frequent floods due to the climate crisis.
This week’s weather-related losses are the highest since June last year, when 26 people died due to heavy rains. 17 people lost their lives in floods and landslides in December.
Sri Lanka’s worst floods since the turn of the century occurred in June 2003 and killed 254 people.
