Cyclone Ditwah

Sri Lanka entered another anxious day on Friday as heavy rains soaked the island’s central highlands, prompting fresh landslide warnings and deepening the tragedy left behind by Cyclone Ditwah. The death toll, already staggering, climbed to 607—many of them victims of mudslides that buried entire stretches of hillside communities.

The National Building Research Organisation, which monitors the stability of the island’s mountain slopes, warned that rainfall over the past 24 hours had exceeded 150 millimetres, saturating soil that was already dangerously unstable. If the downpour continues, officials urged residents to evacuate before the hills give way again.

The latest rains …