Floods leave 363,000 homeless in Sri Lanka

Today Online
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More than 300,000 people have been forced out of their homes by flooding in Sri Lanka, with no sign of a let-up in the torrential rain on the island nation's east coast.

Four more people were killed by mudslides on Friday, bringing the death toll to 27, officials said. The number of people reported missing stands at 12.

The government's Disaster Management Centre said more than 1 million people have been affected by the rains, with 363,000 made homeless.

Many villages remain cut off from supplies despite a huge relief effort involving tens of thousands of troops, transport helicopters and naval boats.

The United Nations and other aid agencies have also stepped in to provide food, sleeping mats, water tanks, purification tablets and hygiene kits. Across swathes of the east of the country, clean water supplies have been contaminated by the floodwaters and there are fears of an outbreak of disease.

"We are monitoring the situation very carefully," said Mr Mervyn Fletcher, a spokesman for the United Nations Children's Fund in Colombo.

Pregnant women and young children have already been taken to the hospital to protect them from waterborne diseases in districts in which floods have brought sewage into the streets, a spokesman for the Ministry of Health said.

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