Rains, floods kill 11 in Lanka
Torrential rains and flooding have killed 11 people in southern and western Sri Lanka and forced around 18,000 families from their homes, a top disaster relief official said yesterday.
"We are providing dry rations to the affected people," said ND Hettiarachchi, director general of the National Disaster Management Centre.
The heavy rains since Thursday had also triggered landslides in some areas, blocking roads, newspapers reported.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Media showed people using makeshift rafts to escape flooded houses in some areas. In other parts, schoolchildren in uniform walked home in knee-deep water carrying their bicycles.
Sri Lanka's monsoon season runs from September to December.
Some 260,000 people so far have been affected by the floods, he said.
"We have allocated 10 million rupees (100,000 dollars) to provide initial relief measures," he told AFP.
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