Bodies of the victims are tranferred out of the site of the mudslides in Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, on Aug. 18, 2017. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday said that more than 400 people had lost their lives in the mudslides that had occurred on Aug. 14 and that several hundred people were still missing, meaning that the death toll could still increase. (Xinhua/Chen Cheng)
GENEVA, Aug. 18 (Xinhua) -- The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday said that more than 400 people had lost their lives in the mudslides that had occurred on Aug. 14 and that several hundred people were still missing, meaning that the death toll could still increase.
OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke told a press briefing here that a UN Disaster and Assessment Coordination mission has been mobilized and will start their job Friday.
Alessandra Vellucci, head of the UN information service at Geneva, told reporters that after the disaster, there had been an immediate response by the UN system. The World Food Programme, for example, had responded within hours following the mudslide and had delivered food for 7,500 survivors.
The UN Children's Fund said that it is providing emergency sanitation and safe drinking water, including by installing rain harvesting facilities and building latrines.
The International Organization for Migration said that the organization, with its partners, had developed a standard shelter and kitchen set distributed to the 1,100 households of nearly 4 000 people, whose homes had been destroyed.
