Death toll climbs to 474, over 350 still missing

Villagers in Sri Lanka yesterday used spades to clear away mud as they searched for the bodies of relatives and friends days after 13 homes were flattened by a landslide in the dead of night caused by a cyclone that killed 474 people.

Cyclone Ditwah barrelled through the Indian Ocean island nation last week, setting off the landslide in the central region of Mawathura that left only a broken window pane, walls of ruined homes, and a twisted red sari buried in the mud.

"We managed to dig out my uncle, his wife, and his mother-in-law last night," Neil Jayasinghe, who runs a bakery in a nearby town, told Reuters.

"We just wrapped them in a sheet and buried them nearby. There wasn't even a coffin," Neil added.