[caption id="attachment_124391" align="alignright" width="183"] Sri Lankan military personnel walk past a damaged building at the site of a landslide caused by heavy monsoon rains in central Sri Lanka on November 1, 2014.[/caption]
Irans Foreign Ministry has expressed sympathytothe Sri Lankan government and nation over thedeathof a dozen of people in a massive landslide on a tea plantation.
Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham on Sunday expressed the Iranian nation and governments deep sadness over the deaths caused by the mudslide in central Sri Lanka.
At least 38 peoplearemissingor killed after heavy rainfall caused part of a hillside to sheer off and crash into the Meeriyabedda tea plantation near the town of Haldummulla, about 200km east of the capital Colombo, on Wednesday.
It buried workers' homes in nine meters of mud.
Rescue teams are using mechanical diggers and sniffer dogs to root through the debris and recover bodies.
Sri Lanka has experienced massive landslides and monsoon rains in recent years.
In 2011, flooding killed over a dozen people and displaced more than one million others in many parts of the country.
Landslides and floods also killed nearly 20 people and forced more than 150,000 others from their homes in the southern districts of Galle and Kalutara, the southeastern districts of Kegalla and Ratnapura and the central hilly areas in 2008.