The death toll from a devastating landslide in the Colombian town of Mocoa stood at around 200 today as rescuers clawed through piles of muck and debris in search of survivors.
The death toll from a devastating landslide in the Colombian town of Mocoa stood at around 200 today as rescuers clawed through piles of muck and debris in search of survivors.
The Colombian Red Cross, which provided the revised consolidated toll, said it was unclear how many people were still missing.
An earlier Red Cross tally said 234 had been killed and more than 100 were unaccounted for. A spokesman for the organization said the miscount was due to confusion about the identities of the victims.
At the Vatican, Pope Francis said he was "profoundly saddened" by the disaster, which struck the town of 40,000 with little warning late Friday after days of torrential rains that caused flooding of three area rivers.
"I pray for the victims and want to assure those who weep for the missing of my closeness to them," the pope said in a statement.
At least 203 people were injured, some 300 families were affected and 25 homes destroyed, the Red Cross said.
The Pacific rim of South America has been hard hit in recent months by floods and mudslides, with scores killed in Peru and Ecuador as well.
In Mocoa, the capital of the department of Putumayo in Colombia's Amazon basin, the avalanche of mud and water swept away homes, bridges, vehicles and trees, leaving piles of wrecked timber buried in thick mud.
President Juan Manuel Santos was scheduled to return to Mocoa on Sunday along with cabinet ministers to supervise rescue efforts in the heavily forested region.
The president met with rescuers and survivors in Mocoa yesterday, and declared a public health and safety emergency to speed up rescue and aid operations.
"Dear God, I don't want to even remember that," said street vendor Marta Ceballos, who survived the mudslide.
"To see how some people screamed, and others cried, ran, tried to flee in cars, on motorcycles, and how they were trapped in the mud. It's all too, too difficult," she told AFP.
Ceballos said that she lost all of her material possessions. "The only things I fortunately did not lose were my husband, my daughters and my nephews," she said.
Putumayo Governor Sorrel Aroca called the event "an unprecedented tragedy" for the area.
There are "hundreds of families we have not yet found and whole neighborhoods have disappeared," he told W Radio.
Carlos Ivan Marquez, director of the National Disaster Risk Management Unit, told
(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)
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