Diarrhoea has killed 150 people and infected nearly 12Â 000 in flood-ravaged Ethiopia, the United Nations said on Monday, as aid agencies and governments struggled to deliver food and supplies to tens of thousands left homeless. Flash floods that began swamping villages and towns earlier this month have already killed about 900 people.
Ethiopia on Monday stepped up evacuation warnings in low-lying areas as heavy rains threatened more of the flash floods that have already killed at least 600 people and affected tens of thousands around the country. Authorities said unusually heavy seasonal downpours in the highlands have raised water levels to a critical level at three dams.
Search-and-rescue teams kept up frantic efforts on Friday to save thousands marooned by fatal flash floods in south-west Ethiopia where relief workers reported near-total devastation. Already, nearly 900 people in southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia have been reported dead or missing in the past two weeks.
Emergency workers in south-west Ethiopia scrambled on Thursday to rescue thousands marooned by the latest in a series of deadly flash floods across the nation feared to have killed nearly 900 people. With 876 people in southern, eastern and northern Ethiopia already reported dead or missing, officials warned that the toll was likely to climb higher.
The death toll from devastating floods in south-west Ethiopia soared to 364 on Wednesday, police said, bringing to almost 900 the number killed or missing in raging waters nationwide this month. Authorities said they feared for the worst and were preparing for the possibility that several hundred more may have drowned from weekend flooding.
Ethiopia braced on Wednesday for a sharp rise in the death toll from flash floods that have killed at least 455 people in the south and east of the country this month and have now spread north. As efforts continued to rescue up to 20 000 people marooned in the south and locate 250 missing in the east, new floods were reported north of the capital.
Rescuers battled heavy rains in south-west Ethiopia on Tuesday to save up to 20 000 people marooned by floods that killed at least 125 on the weekend as forecasters warned of more downpours. Poor weather grounded helicopter flights in the remote region, forcing authorities to deploy emergency personnel by boat to at least five inundated villages.
At least 125 people were killed overnight and up to 20 000 marooned by flood waters in south-west Ethiopia after swollen rivers broke their banks and swept through villages, police said on Monday. ”The death toll has reached 125,” Inspector Daniel Gezhegn, a police spokesperson, said. The floodwaters swept through five villages.
Five people have drowned and hundreds been displaced in northern Ethiopia since midweek after swollen rivers burst their banks, officials said on Friday. The flooding, which started on Wednesday, comes less than a week after flash floods killed 254 in an eastern township of the country.
The death toll from weekend Ethiopia floods that devastated an eastern town rose to 250 on Thursday as rescue efforts entered a fourth day, making it the worst flooding disaster to date in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation, the government and police said. About 10 000 people are still displaced.
Hopes faded on Tuesday for finding survivors from hundreds of people missing after murderous weekend flash floods devastated a town in eastern Ethiopia, officials and residents said. With the death toll from flooding in and around Dire Dawa hovering at 206, they said frantic rescue efforts were continuing but conceded chances were slim.
Rescuers clawed through mud and debris with their hands, garden tools and heavy equipment in eastern Ethiopia on Monday, searching for hundreds of people missing after lethal flash floods. Officials said 206 bodies had been recovered but the toll was expected to climb as 300 people were still unaccounted for.
The death toll from flash floods in eastern Ethiopia has risen to at least 190, with 39 children among the victims, an official said on Monday. Floods tore through the eastern town of Dire Dawa early on Sunday, and as many as 10 000 people have been displaced in and around the town.
At least 72 people were killed early on Sunday in flash floods after an intense, sudden downpour pounded eastern Ethiopia, many of the victims swept away while asleep, medical officials and rescue workers said. Doctors said they had received bodies from villages that were inundated in the country’s Dire Dawa region.
Three explosions in Dire Dawa, a railway town in eastern Ethiopia, on Monday caused minor damage but no injuries, a police official said. Police had arrested one person suspected of involvement and an investigation was continuing. While such explosions are relatively rare in Ethiopia, Addis Ababa this year has been hit by several mysterious blasts.
Ethiopia’s 1 700-year-old obelisk, returned to the country 14 months ago, will be re-erected after the rainy season that ends in September, the United Nations agency in charge of culture said on Monday. Stolen by Italian fascist invaders in the 1930s, the Ethiopian national treasure was returned in April last year.
Horn of Africa power Ethiopia said on Thursday it was tracking military movements by Somalia’s newly powerful Islamists and would ”crush” any attack on President Abdullahi Yusuf’s interim government. ”We will use all means at our disposal to crush the Islamist group if they attempt to attack Baidoa, the seat of the transitional federal government,” said Ethiopian Information Minister Berhan Hailu.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) issued an urgent appeal on Monday for ,7-million to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in Ethiopia. Unicef said that unless it secured the funding, it would have to cancel the second half of a programme that reaches seven million children twice a year.
The International Development Association, an arm of the World Bank, has written off ,616-billion of Ethiopia’s debt under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, the bank’s country office disclosed on Wednesday. In a statement, the World Bank said Ethiopia’s economic performance over the past three years had been ”strong and broad-based”.
Members of a group listed by the United States as a terrorist band are now running the capital of neighbouring Somalia, days after Islamic fighters wrested control of the city from warlords, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Tuesday. ”The renowned extremist and terrorist organisation, al-Ittihad, is at the helm of the current leadership in Mogadishu,” Meles told lawmakers.
Stung by their inability to end 15 years of conflict in Somalia, African Union leaders prepare to confront the issue with no clear solution except to recite old appeals and re-emphasise the pressing need for stability for the Horn of African nation. Despite fears of the Somali developments, the leaders meeting at a weekend summit appear unlikely to endorse any new proposal to try to halt the unrest.
Ethiopian forces killed 111 Eritrean-trained and armed insurgents in the north-west of the country, reported the government-owned newspaper Addis Zemen on Wednesday. The insurgents had infiltrated from neighbouring Eritrea on a mission of destabilisation, according to the Amharic-language daily.
Ethiopia on Tuesday claimed it had killed more than 110 rebels sent by arch-foe Horn of Africa neighbour Eritrea to destabilise the country since the beginning of the month. The defence ministry said Ethiopian security forces had killed 111, wounded 18 and captured 107 ”anti-peace forces” operating on Asmara’s behalf in northern Ethiopia since early June.
Somali transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf on Tuesday arrived in Addis Ababa for talks with the African Union, whose plans to deploy peacekeepers in the country face a raft of challenges including opposition from increasing powerful Islamists, officials said.
General John Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on local and international efforts to combat terrorism, state media said on Tuesday. The talks came as Ethiopia faced accusations of deploying its troops inside Somalia to protect the country’s fledgling interim government.
African and Western diplomats were discussing the details of a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, an African Union spokesperson said on Monday, after militias vowing to impose Islamic rule took over the capital. The meeting will not decide when peacekeepers will be deployed because the United Nations Security Council will have to first ease an arms embargo on Somalia.
Dissident factions of two Darfur rebel groups that have rejected a peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region are to sign onto the pact this week, African Union officials said on Wednesday. Splinter wings of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement are to sign a specially prepared annex to the peace deal.
A United Nations Security Council team met on Wednesday with African Union officials to discuss the possible handover to the UN of an AU peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. A day after failing to win express Sudanese government approval for the transfer, the UN mission arrived at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Dissident Darfur rebels said on Friday they would sign an African Union-mediated peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region and urged hold-outs to join them. Despite missing a Wednesday midnight deadline to agree to the pact or face possible sanctions, they said the AU was preparing an annex to the May 5 accord for them.
A senior Ethiopian health official said on Thursday that there has been a marked increase in HIV/Aids infection among women in the country, with the prevalence rate among sexually active women now standing at 5%. ”Women are vulnerable to the HIV/Aids pandemic due to their low socio-economic status in Ethiopia,” Health Minister Dr Kebede Worku said.
The African Union expressed "deep regret" on Thursday that hold-out Darfur rebel groups had failed to meet a midnight deadline to sign a peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region. At the same time it held out hope that dissident factions of the two groups would accept the Darfur Peace Agreement.
At least 17 people were killed and 36 injured when a passenger bus plunged into a deep ravine in northern Ethiopia after skidding off a muddy rural road, police said on Wednesday. The vehicle, which was carrying 63 passengers, swerved off the road running from the town of Essie to Baherder at Kelto, about 520km north-east of the capital, late on Tuesday.