Sri Lanka deploys troops as floodwaters rise, death toll hits 69

COLOMBO: Sri Lankan troops were racing to rescue hundreds of people marooned by rising floodwaters on Friday as weather-related deaths rose to 69, with another 34 people declared missing.

Helicopters and navy boats carried out multiple rescue operations, plucking residents from tree tops, roofs and villages cut off by floodwaters.

The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said the toll had climbed with the recovery of more bodies in the worst affected central region, where most victims had been buried alive as mudslides hit this week. Rain was falling across the island with some regions receiving 360 millimetres in the past 24 hours, the DMC said.

The Kelani River, which flows into the Indian Ocean near the capital Colombo, breached its banks on Friday.

V. S. A. Ratnayake, 56, said he had to leave his flooded home in Kaduwela, just outside Colombo.

“I think this could be the worst flood in our area for three decades,” Ratnayake told AFP. “I remember a flood in the 1990s when my house was under seven feet of water.”