E Africa lashed by heavy rains

2002-05-14 13:45

Nairobi - Nearly 150 people have been killed and nearly 175 000 forced to flee their homes in eastern Africa because of torrential downpours in the region, official statistics released on Monday said.

With 68 dead and 150 000 displaced, Kenya has been hit hardest by the storms, which have caused landslides and floods along Africa's eastern coast.

The rains have been exceptionally heavy for the past three weeks of this year's rainy season, which meteorologists have attributed to abnormally high temperatures affecting the Indian Ocean.

Twenty-two people died last week alone, including a man and woman and their five children, who drowned during a flash flood in the western Baringo district, police spokesperson Peter Kimanth said.

In Madagascar - already in the throes of a political crisis - 13 people died over the weekend in unseasonable storms that battered the Indian Ocean island nation for four days, following a cyclone that killed two people on Thursday.

Respiratory diseases

Floods caused by the storms have the main port city of Toamasina cut off from the rest of the country, leaving the city's 165 000 inhabitants without electricity and fresh water and leading health authorities to fear the emergence of epidemics.

"Two children under two died of respiratory diseases on Sunday because of humidity and lack of hygiene linked to the floods," Alfred Lahady, a doctor in the hygiene bureau said.

On Saturday, two people drowned in Toamasina when they fell into a hole, and two others were carried away on a bridge that was washed away with the force of the high waters in Ivoloina, about 15km north of the town, according to police.

The seven other fatalities were all people swept away by high waters in different areas around Toamasina, police said.

Killed by landslides

In Rwanda, at least nine people were killed in landslides in the southwest over the weekend, while a total of 59 people have been killed and 18 000 have been displaced since the storms began two weeks ago.

"Two women and seven children were killed by landslides that destroyed their houses overnight on Friday in the Rusenyi district, in the southwestern Kibuye provience," an emergency worker said by telephone.

And in Uganda, the Red Cross warned that 5 000 have been displaced because of mudslides, which also killed a man and his six children last Tuesday in the southwestern Bushenyi district.

Even after the rains subside, however, the worst may not yet be over.

"Two days from now, the big problems will start, notably an increase in respiratory diseases, diarrhoea and malaria, because of the stagnant water," warned Lahady in Madagascar. - Sapa-AFP

- SAPA