Raging waters swept away and killed at least five sleeping children as a third week of torrential rains pounded southern Somalia, bringing the flooding death toll to at least 85, officials said on Friday.
With downpours continuing and no end in sight to the unusually heavy seasonal rains that have wrought further misery in a country already on the brink of war, local officials said new overnight floods had hit the south.
The five children were killed when their homes in villages near the provincial town of Jowhar, about 90km north of Mogadishu, were washed away by waters from rivers that burst their banks, they said.
”Five children died after heavy floods swept their homes away while they were sleeping,” said Ibrahim Nur Osman, the security commander for Somalia’s powerful Islamist movement in the Middle Shabelle region where Jowhar is situated.
Scores of survivors were clinging to trees, grieving for the losses of their loved ones and property as well as trying to avoid being eaten by crocodiles unleashed by the flooding of the Shabelle and Jubba rivers, residents said.
At least nine of the flood fatalities are known to have been devoured by the crocodiles, which have been on a feeding frenzy in Beledweyne, further north of Jowhar, according to locals.
”Casualties are increasing day by day,” Osman told the media. ”People are getting killed, others injured, while others are being evacuated. Everybody is grieving from treetops where they have escaped.”
The village of Bulo-Warey, where the children died overnight on Thursday, was completely inundated, with the surviving residents fleeing as best they could, an official said.
”I tell you that none of the affected people is in the village because the whole place in covered by water,” said Osman Adan Ibrahim, a local Islamist representative.
The floods have compounded difficulties for Somalis already on edge fearing an outbreak of all-out war between the Islamists and the country’s weak transitional government that many believe could spark a regional conflict.
Nearly one million Somalis are estimated to be affected by the flooding, of which at least 336 000 have been forced from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Health officials have also sounded the alarm for outbreaks of waterborne disease, particularly cholera, which has already been confirmed in two areas.
The rains have destroyed farmlands, disrupted food supplies, cut off villages and washed away roads, complicating the delivery of aid to the most vulnerable and impoverished in remote areas. — Sapa-AFP