Torrential rains continued to pound southern Somalia on Wednesday, exacerbating devastating floods as the death toll soared to 73 with reports of 21 more drowning deaths, officials said.
Local officials in Somalia’s Middle Shabelle, Middle Juba and Lower Juba regions said the 21 people had died when rivers burst their banks, compounding the misery of up to 1,8-million flood-affected people.
In Jowhar, in Middle Shabelle, about 90km north of Mogadishu, an official said 11 people had died in nearby villages when the Shabelle river burst its banks on the weekend.
”At least 11 people have died from flooding in Jowhar area, most of them over the weekend,” Middle Shabelle governor Sheikh Abdi Salan Hussein Mohamed told Agence France-Presse.
Five others, including two children, drowned in Huruwa village, about 45km north of Jowhar, he said.
Islamist officials in Middle Juba said five people had drowned there when the Juba River, which originates in the highlands of neighbouring Ethiopia highlands, overflowed.
”We have lost five people, including two women,” said Ibrahim Shukri, a spokesperson for Middle Juba’s Islamic courts.
Before Wednesday, the death toll from three weeks of floods, combined with attacks by crocodiles unleashed by the waters, had stood at 52.
Officials said the flooding, which started in October, has covered thousands of hectares of farmlands and destroyed the key roads linking the Mogadishu to central regions.
They said hundreds of villagers who were displaced to uplands have been eating raw mangoes and leaves since most of the food stores were washed away by flood that destroyed everything on its path from Ethiopian highlands.
The Somali government has warned of an imminent humanitarian disaster if aid agencies do not rapidly deliver food and non-food items to Gedo, Juba and Hiraan regions, where most of the previous drowning was reported.
The new toll comes as the World Food Programme and the International Committee of the Red Cross launched emergency operations to help hundreds of thousands affected by killer floods in the horn of Africa region. — Sapa-AFP