Death toll rises to 400!

Officials at Freetown’s central morgue of Sierra Leone said that 105 of the more than 300 officially dead were children, and burials began on Tuesday for some of the bodies too mutilated to identify. An independent but unofficial morgue estimate put the toll at 400 dead.

Sierra Leone began a weeklong period of national mourning as it emerged that 105 children were killed by the mudslides and torrential flooding that have left 600 people still missing in Freetown, in one of the worst natural disasters to hit the country.

President Ernest Bai Koroma said flags would fly at half-mast after calling the humanitarian challenge ahead “overwhelming” and seeking urgent help after visiting the devastated hilltop community of Regent on Tuesday.