A man said his wife ,mother-in-law,son and daughter-in-law were all house in Siripura when the landslides hit."I still can't locate my family",MW Dharmadasa said.
“I don’t know what happened to them”
Military spokesman Brigadier Jayanath Jayaweera told reporters in the capital, Colombo, that the army had so far rescued 156 people trapped by landslides, and that more than 1,550 people are in shelters. He said the army was assessing the situation and would deploy more troops if needed.
The same rains that unleashed the mudslides also caused severe flooding in cities including Colombo, the capital, where tens of thousands of homes were at least partially inundated.
Sri Lanka’s disaster management center reported 41 deaths across the country since Monday from lightning strikes, floods, falling trees and other, smaller landslides. Nearly 135,000 people have been displaced and are in temporary shelters.
Mudslides are common during the monsoon season. Much of Sri Lanka has been deforested to clear land for agriculture, leaving the countryside exposed.
During heavy rains in December 2014, authorities evacuated more than 60,000 people from thousands of homes damaged or destroyed by floods or landslides. Two months before that, dozens of tea plantation workers were killed when mudslides buried their hillside homes.