Families wait in rain to ID lost loved ones in Sierra Leone

Please help me God, she sobbed as she waited in a long line in the pouring rain Wednesday outside Freetown's overwhelmed mortuary to try to identify the corpses of her loved ones.

More than 300 people were confirmed dead — a third of them children — from the devastating mudslides that struck before dawn on Monday, triggered by days of heavy rain.

At the city's Connaught Hospital morgue, firefighters, military personnel, police and volunteers tried to help grieving survivors with the difficult process of finding their dead relatives, many too mangled and decomposed to be identified.

Amara Kallon held up photos of his 3-year-old daughter, Hawa, who had been spending her school holidays with her mother in Freetown when a wall of mud hit their home, killing them both.

Amid the chaos of rescue efforts, the government has said contingency plans were being put in place to try to stem the outbreak of diseases such as cholera.