Torrential overnight rain killed 30 people and left a hundred injured in Kinshasa, according to a new toll from the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.
Many homes also collapsed in the flash floods caused by the heavy rain on Thursday night and Friday morning.
Earlier, government spokesperson Toussaint Tshilombo said on state television that the victims of the rains included several children.
With the toll rapidly escalating, the deaths were caused by drowning, electrocution, lightning strikes and collapsing walls of houses, Tshilombo said.
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 devastated on the outskirts of the capital. At Lemba in the south-east, floodwaters 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