Soldiers using heavy diggers stepped up their increasingly frentic search today for victims of a landslide in Sri Lanka, feared to have buried alive 100-300 people on a tea plantation.
Hundreds of rescue workers clawed through tonnes of mud that washed away some 150 tin-roofed homes at the plantation on Wednesday while most of the residents were away at work or in school.
“We are also bringing in an additional 200 troops to add to the 500 already here to carry out the search,” the region´s top military officer, Major General Mano Perera, told reporters.
Rescue efforts were however being hampered by persistent rains, blamed for the initial mudslide, and the unstable conditions of the surrounding hills, the officer said.
