Heavy flooding in Somalia killed at least seven people overnight, bringing the death toll to 80 from three weeks of torrential rains, witnesses and aid workers said on Thursday.
Of the casualties, four were mauled by crocodiles lurking in floodwater in Somalia’s Hiraan region, where the River Shabelle broke its banks and swept through villages, they said.
“We were told by the villagers that four bodies were recovered floating on the floods,” said Abdulahi Mao Nur, an elder in Hiraan’s capital, Beledweyne.
“Crocodiles killed them because they had serious injuries. Two of them had their legs eaten,” Nur said.
“We don’t know how to overcome this problem because every day we are getting information about crocodiles killing and wounding livestock and human beings,” he added.
Humanitarian workers said three other people died when their hut collapsed under heavy flooding in the Lower Shabelle region in southern Somalia, one of the most affected regions in Somalia.
“Three people were found dead after the hut they lived in collapsed. They couldn’t manage to escape and nobody was there to rescue them,” said Abdulkadir Hudo, a local aid worker.
As heavy downpours continued to wreak havoc in Somalia, which is already beset by years of conflict, relief organisations scrambled to rescue the flood-affected people, estimated at nearly one million.
On Wednesday, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) launched a massive emergency relief operation to the lawless Somalia’s Juba, Gedo and Hiraan regions, where floods have washed farmlands, disrupted food supplies and cut off villages.
The ICRC said it had started airlifting tarpaulins to assist 324Â 000 people in those areas while the UN’s World Food Programme sent a large Ilyushin-76 aircraft and two heavy-lift helicopters to airdrop food.
The Somali government has warned of an imminent humanitarian disaster if aid agencies do not rapidly deliver food and other essential items to the most remote regions, most of which are inaccessible.
Somalia, a nation of about 10-million, has lacked any disaster-response mechanism since the country was plunged into anarchy after the 1991 ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre.
In addition to the conflict, hundreds of thousands of people have been affected by years of droughts, floods and absence of permanent humanitarian operations. — AFP