Colombo: At least 46 people are feared dead after Cyclone Ditwah swept across Sri Lanka on Friday. Twenty-three people are missing, officials said.
The weather department has warned that the storm could intensify as it moves across the island over the next 12 hours.
India has assured all assistance to the island nation. Rescue teams are on a standby to reach affected areas. Relief material will also be sent, officials said.
Five flights bound for Colombo have been diverted to the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport in Kerala. More flight operations from Colombo are likely to be shifted to Thiruvananthapuram.
Most deaths occurred due to landslides triggered by torrential rainfall exceeding 300 mm (11.8 inches) over the past 24 hours as Cyclone Ditwah lashed the island nation, with the eastern and central regions most severely affected.
Officials have said that 43,991 people have evacuated to schools and other public shelters by the Disaster Management Centre (DMC). They included families stranded on rooftops
.
Schools remained closed, train services were suspended, and the Colombo Stock Exchange announced an early trading halt as heavy rains persisted.
“We are continuing rescue operations in the worst-hit areas, but some villages are difficult to reach because roads are blocked by landslides…we are doing our best to get everyone to safety,” Brigadier S Dharmawickrema, emergency operations director at the DMC, told Reuters.
Sri Lanka may divert flights from its main airport to Trivandrum or Cochin airports in south India if conditions worsen, Ports and Civil Aviation Minister Anura Karunathilake told reporters.
The five flights diverted to Thiruvananthapuram included three from the Middle East and one each from Malaysia. The other one was one from Mumbai to Colombo.
Two were Srilankan Airline flights, one each from Dubai and Doha, one was an Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi and one an AirAsia flight from Kuala Lumpur, the Thiruvananthapuram International Airport Ltd (TIAL) said.
The fifth was an Indigo flight from Mumbai to Colombo, it said.
The Etihad Airways aircraft landed at Thiruvananthapuram at 3.44 am, the AirAsia flight at 4.37 am and the Srilankan Airlines flights at 7.44 am and 7.55 am, TIAL said. The Indigo flight landed at 9.49 am.
The flights which landed at the Thiruvananthapuram airport in the morning are still here due to the bad weather conditions in Colombo, a TIAL official said.