Sri Lanka's cyclone death toll climbs to 355, with 366 missing

By Uditha Jayasinghe

COLOMBO, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Rescuers in Sri Lanka were scrambling on Monday to clear roads and deliver aid to more than half a million people hit by a cyclone last week, as the death toll climbed to 355, with 366 missing, official figures showed.

Cyclone Ditwah, packing strong winds and heavy rains, brought the island nation's worst floods in a decade when it struck on Friday, setting off landslides in the hilly central region.

People salvaged belongings from flooded homes along the banks of the Kelani river near Colombo, the capital, Reuters visuals showed.

Officials said train and flight services resumed after being were disrupted last week, although schools stayed closed.

In a statement, weather authorities said, "It (the storm) is very likely to move northwards, away from the island, and weaken further."

It was the first time the entire country had been struck by such a natural disaster, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Sunday, which he called the "largest and most challenging" in Sri Lanka's history.

The cyclone also brought heavy rain to India's southern state of Tamil Nadu over the weekend, where three people were killed in rain-related incidents, K.K.S.S.R. Ramachandran, the state's minister for disaster management, said on Sunday.

The storm, 50 km (30 miles) off the coast of Chennai, the state capital, has already weakened into a "deep depression" and is expected to weaken further over the next 12 hours, weather officials said on Monday.

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe; Writing by Sakshi Dayal and Pooja Desai; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

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