Sri Lanka today confirmed that at least 10 people died and 28 remain missing in a landslide at a tea plantation last week in the country's central hill areas as officials began checking voters list and school records to identify those buried under the mud.
Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera said the toll was 10 with the recovery of 3 bodies yesterday in the central hill district of Badulla's Haldummulla area.
At least 28 people were unaccounted for, he said.
Authorities were still cross-checking the voters' register and school records to count how many more had been fallen victim.
The current figures shown for both dead and the disappeared are much lower than feared earlier.
The Disaster Management Centre said that as many as 1,755 people remain in temporary shelters because their homes were destroyed or made unsafe by last Wednesday's tragedy at the Koslanda plantation in Badulla district, about 220 kilometres from here.
Officials blamed the media for saying as many as 300 people many have been buried by the landslide.
Meanwhile, authorities warned of landslides in six other mountainous districts as heavy rain continued to lash most parts of the Island nation.
Sri Lanka is one of the world's leading tea producers. However, most tea plantation workers continue to live on risky slopes in dilapidated one-room houses built by British colonisers more than a century ago.
