Rescue workers have recovered 270 bodies so far from a mudslide in the outskirts of Sierra Leone's capital Freetown, the mayor said on Tuesday, as rescue operations continued and morgues struggled to find space for all the dead.
President Ernest Bai Koroma urged residents of Regent and other flooded areas around Freetown to evacuate immediately so that military personnel and other rescue workers could continue to search for survivors that might be buried underneath debris.
Dozens of houses were covered in mud when a mountainside collapsed in the town of Regent on Monday morning, one of the deadliest natural disasters in Africa in recent years.