DAKAR, Senegal — The bodies floated down the streets and piled up at the morgue, where the coroners struggled to find room for all of the dead.

An already devastating flood the day before produced even more anguish on Tuesday in Sierra Leone as residents of Freetown, the capital, dug through the mud in search of missing family members.

The Red Cross said hundreds of people had been killed and 600 were missing after torrential rains early Monday caused mudslides and transformed city streets into fast-moving rivers of muddy water, washing away everything in their path.

One worker at the city’s morgue, who was not authorized to speak to reporters, said he had seen as many as 400 bodies there.

Residents of the poor communities built into the capital city’s unstable hillsides suffered the most. Their homes — shacks, really — were quickly buried or violently swept away in the deluge. Aid groups estimated that 3,000 people had been left homeless.