Torrential rain overnight killed nine people and caused many homes to collapse in Kinshasa, a government spokesperson in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Toussaint Tshilombo Send, said on Friday.
The storm that raged all night long claimed its victims, including several children, by drowning, electrocution, lightning strikes and collapsing walls of houses, Tshilombo said on state television.
All the waterways in the east of Kinshasa, a city of more than six million, burst their banks and flooded crop plantations, while roads were cut off and a number of bridges were swept away.
Government and municipal officials met on Friday morning to set up a crisis unit to help those affected by the storm, which led the DRC’s national transport office to cancel train links between eastern suburbs and central Kinshasa for fear of an accident on a weakened bridge.
An Agence France-Presse correspondent saw districts devasted on the outskirts of the capital. At Lemba in the south-east, flood waters had swept away almost a kilometre of road and all the roadside stalls along it, leaving a hole in the ground 2m deep. — Sapa-AFP