People wade through a flooded road after heavy rainfall in Kaduwela on the outskirts of Colombo on November 28, 2025. (Photo by Ishara S. KODIKARA / AFP)
Colombo: Sri Lankan troops were racing to rescue hundreds of people marooned by rising floodwaters on Friday as weather-related deaths rose to 69, with another 34 people declared missing.
Helicopters and navy boats carried out multiple rescue operations, plucking residents from tree tops, roofs and villages cut off by floodwaters.
The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) said the toll had climbed with the recovery of more bodies in the worst affected central region, where most victims had been buried alive as mudslides hit this week.
Rain was falling across the island with some regions receiving 360 millimetres in the past 24 hours, the DMC said.
The Kelani River, which flows into the Indian Ocean near the capital Colombo, breached its banks on Friday.
V. S. A. Ratnayake, 56, said he had to leave his flooded home in Kaduwela, just outside Colombo.
"I think this could be the worst flood in our area for three decades," Ratnayake told AFP. "I remember a flood in the 1990s when my house was under seven feet of water."
Another Kaduwela resident, Kalyani, 48, who uses only one name, said she was sheltering two families whose homes were flooded.
At least 3,000 homes were damaged in mudslides and floods, and over 18,000 people had been moved to temporary shelters.
In Anuradhapura district in the north, an Air Force Bell 212 helicopter airlifted a man who had climbed a coconut tree to escape rising waters.
The DMC said more rain was forecast, with Cyclone Ditwah likely to move away from the north towards the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu by Sunday.
