An AFP journalist at the scene saw bodies being carried away and houses submerged in two areas of the city, where roads turned into churning rivers of mud and corpses were washed up on the streets.
Red Cross spokesman Patrick Massaquoi said the death toll was 312 but could rise further as his team continued to survey disaster areas in Freetown and tally the number of dead.
Mohamed Sinneh, a morgue technician at Freetown's Connaught Hospital, said 180 bodies had been received so far at his facility alone, many of them children, leaving no space to lay what he described as the "overwhelming number of dead".
Many more bodies were taken to private morgues, Sinneh said.
Images obtained by AFP showed a ferocious churning of dark orange mud coursing down a steep street in the capital, while videos posted by local residents showed people waist and chest deep in water trying to traverse the road.
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