Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has declared an “economic, social and ecological emergency” as the first victims of the Mocoa landslide were buried.
The president said the government was also putting 40,000m pesos ($13.9 million) towards “addressing humanitarian priorities”.
However, the hunt still continues for any survivors.
The Red Cross told AFP they were still within the 72-hour window where they would hope to find people alive.
Image source Reuters
However, hopes were fading among residents still desperate to find family members swept away in the torrent of mud, rocks and debris which struck the south-western town of 40,000 early on April 1.
The flood came after a night of extremely heavy rain, which raised the water levels of the Mocoa River and three tributaries, sweeping away entire neighborhoods.
Those who remain are now awaiting the arrival of humanitarian assistance.
According to El Espectador, there was at least 40 tons of emergency humanitarian assistance on its way to the town, including 2,000 food kits and 1,000 tents.
Meanwhile, President Juan Manuel Santos said 7,000 blankets and 6,000 mats had just been delivered, El Pais reported.
On April 2, Colombia’s Farc rebel group offered to help rebuild the town, but their involvement has yet to be approved by the government.
President Juan Manuel Santos has vowed investment will be made to make Mocoa better than it was before, and put Defense Minister Luis Carlos Villegas in charge of the rebuilding of the town.
However the president’s critics said more should have been done to protect the area from such disasters.
The total death toll of the devastating mudslides in south-west Colombia is now 254, with hundreds also injured.
According to President Juan Manuel Santos, dozens of children are among those killed.
Heavy rain flooded the town of Mocoa in Colombia’s south-west, with mud and rocks burying whole neighborhoods and forcing residents to flee their homes.
More than 1,000 soldiers and police are involved in the relief effort in Putumayo province.
President Juan Manuel Santos, who flew to the area on April 1 after the landslide struck, said: “Until we have the last person identified we are not going to stop.”
The relief efforts continued throughout the weekend.
At least 170 of the dead identified, including 44 children, said the president.
Image source Reuters
The army had previously reported 200 people missing, but the president tweeted on April 2 that there were officially no disappeared persons.
Earlier in the day, video footage from Mocoa showed residents crying over a list of missing children, with their names and aged pinned to a board.
The exact death toll is hard to confirm with the rescue operation still under way – some local media estimate up to 300 people have been killed.
The Colombian Red Cross said it was working to help family members contact each other, and the Air Force has brought supplies.
President Juan Manuel Santos has vowed investment will be made to make Mocoa better than it was before.
His critics said more should have been done to protect the area from such disasters.
The landslide struck in the early hours of April 1, when many people were asleep in bed.
Colombia’s director of the National Disaster Risk Management Unit told the AFP that a third of the region’s expected monthly rain fell during one night.
Although rainfall is abundant in the area, this downpour was unusually heavy and caused rivers to burst their banks.
The overflow then picked up mud and debris, creating a cascade.
Video footage of the aftermath showed currents so strong that abandoned trucks were propelled through the flooded streets.
A senior UN official in Colombia, Martin Santiago, blamed climate change, saying it had caused “tremendous results in terms of intensity, frequency and magnitude of these natural effects” in the region.
Others said deforestation has also played a role.
With no running water in Mocoa, one resident told El Tiempo newspaper that they had been collecting rainwater. Power lines are also out across the area.
Photos posted to social media by the air force showed some patients being evacuated by air.
Landslides have struck the region several times in recent months.
In November 2016, nine people died in the town of El Tambo, about 90 miles from Mocoa, during a landslide that followed heavy rain.
Less than a month before that, another landslide killed several people near Medellin, almost 300 miles to the north.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro and his Colombian counterpart, Juan Manuel Santos, have agreed to gradually reopen their common border after talks in Ecuador.
Venezuela closed the Colombian border a month ago and launched a major anti-smuggling operation.
Nicolas Maduro says smuggling has led to shortages in parts of Venezuela.
Meeting in Ecuador, Nicolas Maduro and Juan Manuel Santos also said they would return ambassadors to each other’s capitals immediately.
Some 20,000 Colombians have left Venezuela since the crisis began.
More than 1,500 of them were evicted due to alleged connections with criminal gangs operating in the area.
Most of the others fled in fear, many carrying their personal belongings over the border rivers.
“Common sense, dialogue and peace between our peoples and our countries have triumphed today,” said Nicolas Maduro after the talks in Quito.
For his part, Juan Manuel Santos said Venezuela “should have respected the rights of Colombians” who had to leave the country and return over the border.
The Colombian leader added: “I agree that criminal organizations working in the border area is a big problem, but the best way to deal with it is by working together.”
Most crossings were closed and some 3,000 Venezuelan troops have been deployed along the border since Nicolas Maduro launched a major anti-smuggling operation 19 August.
For many years, heavily subsidized items from Venezuela, including cheap petrol, have been sold at huge profit over the border in Colombia.
Nicolas Maduro says smuggling has led to shortages in the west of Venezuela and other parts of the country.
The talks on September 21 were facilitated by Uruguayan President Tabare Vasquez and his Ecuadorean counterpart, Rafael Correa.
The summit was preceded by two meetings between the Colombian and the Venezuelan foreign ministers.
Colombians are voting in a runoff election between incumbent President Juan Manuel Santos and his conservative rival Oscar Ivan Zuluaga.
The campaign has been dominated by discussions on the ongoing peace talks with the leftist FARC rebel group.
President Juan Manuel Santos, who launched the negotiations in November 2012, lost the first round of the vote last month by a narrow margin.
His opponent Oscar Ivan Zuluaga says he will impose tougher conditions in order to carry on with the talks.
More than 32 million Colombians are eligible to vote, but the turnout was low in the first round at just over 40%.
Oscar Ivan Zuluaga defeated Juan Manuel Santos in the first round of vote by a narrow margin
Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, 55, is a former cabinet minister in Juan Manuel Santos’s centre-right government.
Their main disagreement seems to be on how to end a five-decade long conflict with Colombia’s main rebel group, the FARC.
Oscar Ivan Zuluaga initially said he would pull out of the talks and boost military attacks on the weakened rebel group.
That is the line adopted by his mentor, former president Alvaro Uribe, who was elected senator this year and is still one of the most influential figures in Colombian politics.
Later in the campaign he said he would continue to negotiate with the Farc provided the rebels renounced military action during the talks.
Juan Manuel Santos, 62, is aiming to conclude negotiations by the end of the year.
Government negotiators and rebel leaders have held several rounds of talks in the Cuban capital, Havana.
They have agreed on three points of the agenda drawn up in 2012: land reform, future political participation and drug trafficking, which is allegedly the main source of income for the rebels.
Three other points remain to be agreed on: the rights of the victims, disarmament of the rebels and the implementation of the agreement.
On the eve of the vote, Colombia stopped to watch the national team in its opening match in the football World Cup.
Both candidates were quick to congratulate the team on its 3-0 victory over Greece in the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte.
Polls open at 08:00 local time and close at 16:00 local time. Results are expected shortly after polls close, as ballots are electronic.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has rejected proposed mediation by Rev Jesse Jackson over FARC rebel-held hostage.
Juan Manuel Santos said only the Red Cross would be allowed to be involved, because he did not want “a media spectacle”.
Jesse Jackson had agreed to go to Colombia next week to seek the release of former US marine Kevin Scott Sutay, held by leftist FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) rebels since June.
The FARC say they want to free Kevin Scott Sutay to boost peace talks.
During a visit to Cuba on Saturday, Rev Jesse Jackson had agreed to mediate, following a FARC statement saying his “experience and probity” would speed up the process of freeing Kevin Scott Sutay, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan.
However, President Juan Manuel Santos reacted quickly, writing on Twitter: “Only the Red Cross will be allowed to facilitate the release of the North American kidnapped by the FARC. We won’t allow a media spectacle.”
Rev Jesse Jackson had agreed to go to Colombia next week to seek the release of former US marine Kevin Scott Sutay, held by leftist FARC rebels since June
Earlier this month, during a visit to Colombia, Jesse Jackson had called on Colombia’s largest rebel group to release Kevin Scott Sutay.
The left-wing rebels responded by releasing a statement on Saturday inviting the civil rights leader to participate in the negotiations over the ex-soldiers’ release.
Hours later, Jesse Jackson accepted the invitation in Cuba, where he had met rebel leaders who are in Havana for peace talks with the Colombian government, as a service “to Kevin Scott, his family and our nation.”
“We have made contact with the State Department urging them to contact as quickly as possible the nearest of kin of Kevin Scott because his release is imminent,” he said.
In their statement, the FARC say they have not yet released Kevin Scott because the government has not “fulfilled the minimum conditions required” for freeing him.
Earlier this week, the left-wing rebels had requested the involvement of former Senator Piedad Cordoba in the release process, but President Juan Manuel Santos also dismissed this to avoid a “media spectacle”.
As a result, on Friday Piedad Cordoba sent a letter to the FARC declining to participate.
The freeing of Kevin Scott would “contribute to a positive mood” in the continuing peace talks with the Colombian government in Cuba, the FARC says.
So far, officially there has been agreement on only one of six points on the agenda – land reform.
Five decades of internal conflict in Colombia have led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
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