{"id":36581,"date":"2025-11-30T13:33:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:48:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=36581"},"modified":"2025-11-30T13:33:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T07:48:30","slug":"floods-hit-sri-lankas-capital-as-cyclone-death-toll-rises-to-159","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/floods-hit-sri-lankas-capital-as-cyclone-death-toll-rises-to-159\/","title":{"rendered":"Floods hit Sri Lanka&#8217;s capital as cyclone death toll rises to 159"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div><p>Sri Lankan authorities battled rising floodwaters in parts of the capital on Sunday after a powerful cyclone left a trail of destruction, killing at least 159 people across the country.<\/p>\n<p>The northern part of Colombo was facing a major flood, as the water level in the Kelani River continued to rise, the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said.<\/p>\n<p>The death toll had reached 159, with another 203 people missing, the DMC reported, following a week of heavy rains brought on by Cyclone Ditwah, which moved away from Sri Lanka on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Although the cyclone has left us, heavy rains upstream are now flooding low-lying areas along the banks of the Kelani River,&#8221; a DMC official said.<\/p>\n<p>President Anura Kumara Dissanayake declared a state of emergency on Saturday to deal with the aftermath of the cyclone and appealed for international aid.<\/p>\n<p>India was the first to respond, sending relief supplies and two helicopters with crew to carry out rescue missions.<\/p>\n<p>Japan said it will send a team to assess immediate needs and pledged further assistance.<\/p>\n<p>While the rains have subsided across the island, several roads in the worst-affected central province remained inaccessible, the DMC said.<\/p>\n<p>The extreme weather system has destroyed more than 20,000 homes and sent 122,000 people into state-run temporary shelters.<\/p>\n<p>Another 833,000 people required assistance after being displaced by the floods.<\/p>\n<p>Troops from the army, navy, and air force have been deployed alongside civilian workers and volunteers to assist with the relief effort.<\/p>\n<p>Officials reported that about a third of the country remains without electricity or running water due to collapsed power lines and inundated water purification facilities. Internet connections have also been disrupted.<\/p>\n<p>The cyclone has become Sri Lanka&#8217;s deadliest natural disaster since 2017, when flooding and landslides claimed more than 200 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.<\/p>\n<p>The worst flooding since the turn of the century occurred in June 2003, when 254 people were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sri Lankan authorities battled rising floodwaters in parts of the capital on Sunday after a powerful cyclone left a trail of destruction, killing at least 159 people across the country. The northern part of Colombo was facing a major flood, as the water level in the Kelani River continued to rise, the Disaster Management Centre [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36581"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36583,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36581\/revisions\/36583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}