Food aid is reaching thousands who survived a mudslide on the outskirts of Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, the United Nations World Food Programme said on Wednesday, two days after 400 people died and more than 3,000 were left homeless.

Dozens of houses were buried as people slept when a mountainside collapsed in the town of Regent on Monday morning in one of Africa's deadliest mudslides in decades.

The WFP is distributing two-week rations of rice, grains, oil and salt to at least 7,500 people, including survivors, their hosts, rescue workers and mortuary staffers.