Cyclone Ditwah officially exited Sri Lankan territory on Saturday, November 29, 2025, but the nightmare it inflicted lingers with a confirmed death toll of at least 123 and more than 130 individuals still unaccounted for across the island. The Disaster Management Centre warned that the final count may climb sharply once communication is restored to remote mountain villages that have been completely isolated since the storm intensified mid-week, leaving authorities with only fragmentary reports of entire settlements buried under landslides.

The Central Province bore the full brunt of the cyclone’s fury, particularly the hilly districts of Badulla and Nuwara Eliya where tea estates and small hamlets were obliterated. Badulla alone has recorded 49 fatalities and 41 missing persons, while Nuwara Eliya authorities fear the toll has already surpassed 50, with several plantation divisions still unreachable due to collapsed roads, toppled electricity poles, and massive mudslides that swept away homes in seconds under the cover of darkness and relentless rain.

In one of the most heart-stopping incidents, a passenger bus carrying dozens of travellers in the Northwestern Province’s Kalaoya area was swept off the highway by a sudden wall of floodwater and pinned against a bridge for nearly 29 hours. Terrified passengers, including women and children, clung to the roof as raging currents threatened to tear the vehicle apart until Sri Lanka Navy commandos, battling high winds and zero visibility, executed a perilous rope-and-boat rescue that saved all 68 lives in a display of extraordinary courage.

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India responded with immediate solidarity, launching Operation Sagar Bandhu and dispatching two heavy-lift military aircraft packed with relief supplies, medical teams, and rescue personnel to bolster the overwhelmed local response. Meteorological officials emphasised that although the cyclone’s core has moved toward the Indian coastline, its trailing bands continue to dump heavy rain and generate gusts strong enough to trigger fresh landslides, forcing emergency crews to work under constant threat in the already battered highlands.

As exhausted rescue workers dig through metres of mud and debris in a desperate search for survivors, the scale of destruction has laid bare Sri Lanka’s acute vulnerability to increasingly ferocious weather systems. With thousands displaced, critical infrastructure shattered, and entire communities mourning unimaginable loss, the long and arduous journey toward recovery has only just begun in the shadow of Cyclone Ditwah’s deadly passage.

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