DHAKA: The President of Sierra Leone has appealed for international help as rescue workers recovered nearly 400 bodies from a mudslide on the outskirts of the capital Freetown.

President Ernest Bai Koroma visited the site of the disaster, near the town of Regent, and said the country was in a “state of grief” with the devastation overwhelming.

The Red Cross said 600 people were still missing.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said it had delivered 10,000 meals to Sierra Leone and also planned to send medical aid.

Freetown's central morgue was unable to accommodate all the bodies as victims continued to arrive.

“Our problem here is space. We are trying to separate, quantify, and examine quickly and then we will issue death certificates before the burial,” morgue head Owiz Koroma said.

Corpses were lying on the floor and on the ground outside for lack of room, witnesses said.

Medecins Sans Frontieres was providing hundreds of body bags to authorities that the medical charity kept in Sierra Leone after the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak which killed 4,000 people in the former British colony.

To relieve pressure on the morgue, authorities and aid agencies were preparing to bury the bodies in four different cemeteries across Freetown, said Idalia Amaya, an emergency response coordinator for Catholic Relief Services.

“As the search continues, we have collected nearly 400 bodies — but we anticipate more than 500,” chief coroner Seneh Dumbuya said.

Dozens of houses were buried when a mountainside collapsed on Monday morning — one of the deadliest natural disasters in Africa in recent years.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Red Cross's Abdul Nasir said.

Bulldozers dug through mud and rubble at the foot of Mount Sugar Loaf, where many residents had been asleep when part of the mountainside collapsed.

BDST: 2030 HRS, AUG 16, 2017
AP