Save the Children has confirmed that a staff member, along with his young children, is among the hundreds of people missing following a devastating mudslide in Sierra Leone.

The aid agency says the staff member’s house was buried during the mudslide, which struck close to the capital Freetown on Monday morning.
Another Save the Children staff member, Ramatu Jalloh, was near to the scene when the tragedy happened.

“We were driving on the main road out of Freetown past Regent when a lady ran onto the road and started gesticulating wildly. She called out to another lady who had been riding a bike in front of us who, after a brief conversation, started crying and looked very upset,” she
said. “It was clear from their reactions that something terrible had happened. Soon afterwards, another man ran towards our car. He was crying about the number of lives that had been lost.”

“As we continued down the road we could see there was a serious issue. Tons of water was rushing across the road, splitting it in half. We contacted the Save the Children office immediately to tell them that something was seriously wrong.”