Floods: Kenya appeals for help
2006-11-15 15:29
Nairobi - Kenya on Wednesday appealed for aid to help hundreds of thousands of people hit by devastating and deadly floods across the country - triggered by unusually heavy seasonal rains.
As rains continued to pound north and coastal Kenya, authorities made a national appeal for $2.1m to help about 300 000 people who were affected by the floods, which had so far killed 23 people.
Abdi Ahmed, the acting disaster response chief at Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), said: "The appeal money will be used in a three-month operation for emergency response and rehabilitation of ruined infrastructure."
The society said the floods had directly affected at least 80 000 people across the country, but the overall figure was estimated to be about 300 000.
Floods death toll hit 23
At the weekend, at least six people, including a schoolgirl, were swept away and drowned by raging waters around the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa and the northeastern town of Garissa, bringing the death toll to 23 since the rains started in October.
In the coastal region, where roads, bridges and farmlands were swept away, military helicopters continued to ferry relief supplies to tens of thousands of displaced people.
KRCS said: "Flooding is also expected to occur in the traditional flood-prone areas of western Kenya, with rivers threatening to break their banks.
"The floods pose a threat of an outbreak of cholera, malaria, typhoid and other waterborne diseases, while thousands of people need urgent food, shelter, medicine and other essential assistance."
Officials said floodwater continued to wreck havoc at the UN camps for Somali refugees in northeast Kenya, where at least two people, a pregnant woman and a young child, had died and at least 13 000 people were left homeless.
The recent floods were not limited to Kenya, which was being hit as it hosted thousands of environmentalists and government delegates at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that ended this week.
Officials said the onset of rains had compounded problems across the Horn of Africa already brought by a recent killer drought, since parched soil inundating the worst-affected areas is unable to absorb the water.
In Somalia, floods had killed at least 42 and displaced 50 000 people for the past two weeks, compounding the misery affecting millions in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.