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Floods devastate east Africa
03/12/2006 18:53 - (SA)
Nairobi - The worst floods for years have killed at least 150 people and uprooted more than a million others in eastern Africa, said aid workers said on Sunday.
Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda have been hit by driving rains and rising waters in recent weeks that have destroyed homes and isolated some of the world's poorest people.
Somalia has been hardest hit, and efforts to deliver aid have been hindered by rampant insecurity.
Some reports say more than 100 people have died there, a few eaten by crocodiles swept from rivers into villages, but aid workers said few firm statistics were available.
"Many communities, especially in the Juba region, still are totally isolated," said Christian Balslev-Olesen, Somalia representative of the United Nations children's charity, Unicef
"We have flown over these villages in planes and you cannot see anyone. You ask yourself, where did all these people go?"
Whole villages submerged
Unicef said 350 000 Somalis had been directly affected, but Balslev-Olesen said that was a conservative estimate.
Since October 1, most regions of the country have already had more than 300% of their normal rainfall, submerging whole villages and reviving bitter memories of the 1997-'98 floods that killed at least 2 100 Somalis.
Balslev-Olesen said it appeared some lessons had been learned from that disaster, with tons of food pre-positioned near particularly vulnerable settlements.
He said the international community also, had been quicker to charter helicopters to reach cut-off villages.
On Saturday, two UN helicopters flew from Nairobi to southern Somalia and were expected to begin operations in flood-hit areas on Monday.
Balslev-Olesen said: "It is too early to say, and there are lots of similarities between now and 1997, but hopefully we will not be approaching the same death toll as then."
More than 80 people have been killed in floods in remote
parts of Ethiopia bordering Somalia, says the UN.
Nearly a quarter of a million people have lost their livelihoods there, and about a third of those have lost their homes as well.
In Kenya, parts of the coasts and remote northeast have been
devastated.
Three huge refugee camps for Somalis fleeing violence at home have been cut off from the outside world.
At the most-flooded camp, Ifo, refugees had to carry what remained of their meagre belongings through the water to temporary shelters on higher ground 20km away.
Bodies 30km away
A Red Cross spokesperson said 41 Kenyans had died and that
nearly three-quarters of a million were directly affected.
In Rwanda, at least 25 people died when a river burst its banks and swamped a northern village.
Officials said some bodies were found 30km away, and the death toll was expected to rise.
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