In a massive rescue operation which lasted 20 hours on Saturday the Sri Lanka Navy rescued 138 persons of Bangladeshi and Myanmar nationalities whose overcrowded wooden vessel began to sink in the seas 50 nautical miles east of Oluvil.

All were brought to the Oluvil Fisheries Harbour and six of them, four males and two females, were rushed to the Akkaraipattu Base Hospital for treatment due to acute dehydration.

Navy spokesman Commander Kosala Warnakulasuriya, who was in Trincomalee for preparations for today’s Independence Day celebrations, told The Island yesterday that the Police were in the process of interrogating them, but a problem existed due to the language barrier. He said that the Sri Lanka Navy had approached the relevant embassies early yesterday with a request for interpreters.

More than 401,980 persons or 110,204 families, have been affected by the heavy rains and floods in seven provinces.

Forty deaths have been recorded, while seven persons have gone missing.

The Disaster Management Centre (DMC) reported 4,191 houses had been destroyed and 21,705 damaged, while 39,191 persons, or 11,302 families, were accommodated in 242 evacuation centres.

The situation has returned to normal in the Galle and Hambantota districts, while in the Central Province, where 13 deaths were reported and seven missing, 9,114 persons have been affected with 1,570 persons from 476 families being sheltered in 22 evacuation centres in Matale (1,310) Kandy (208) and Nuwara-Eliya (52).

• Deaths : 34
• Injured : 22
• Missing : 09

Floods have affected 275,982 persons belonging to 75,234 families up to date, a spokesman for the Disaster Management Centre said yesterday.
The spokesman said 34 persons have died following floods and landslides while nine are reported missing.

Following the series of minor tremors experienced in the Ampara District last week, the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB) has decided to set up new Seismic Monitoring Unit in the District on Wednesday.

GSMB Chairman Dr. N. P. Wijayananda said that at currently there were three earth tremor monitoring stations and they were at Pallekele, Hakmana and Mahakanadarawa.
"There were five minor tremors recorded in our three centres on the 2.3 Richter scale up to Saturday," he said.
Dr. Wijayananda said that equipments for the new unit in Ampara would be dispatched today (03).