Sri Lanka grapples with trauma and loss after deadly cyclone

Nawaz Nashra recalls grabbing her three-year-old daughter, wrapping her in a bedsheet and running out of their home in central Sri Lanka as a landslide struck, triggered by a deadly cyclone that killed 465 people in the worst floods in a decade.

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Nashra and her pregnant sister, who lived with her, spent the next 20 minutes scrambling down the hillside from Alawathugoda village on Friday night, sometimes knee-deep in mud, until they reached a mosque at a lower altitude, where they spent the night.

"It was pitch dark...We could only hear a sound like thunder," she told Reuters. "The house next to ours collapsed as we watched. There was no time to warn anyone."