MOGADISHU: Flash flooding in southwestern part of Somalia has claimed the lives of over dozen people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their houses, authorities said on Wednesday, as El Nino downpours lash East Africa.
Since the start of the month, heavy rainstorms have hit Somalia and Ethiopia and Kenya, triggering landslides and also submerging several villages and farms, Western media reported.
The flooding comes following Somalia and parts of Kenya and Ethiopia suffered the region’s worst famine in last forty years. “We have warned earlier regarding these heavy rains and forecast this worst situation was coming,” Mohamed Moalim Abdullahi, head of Somalia Disaster Management Agency, stated.
29 people have passed away and almost 850,000 others have been suffered, Abdullahi maintained, including more than 300,000 who have been uprooted from their houses.
Somalia: Floods Kill 29, Displace More 300,000 People
The most affected parts were in the southwest of the country of 17 million people. The UN humanitarian agency said rescue operation was being delayed as roads had been cut after the floods.
A joint effort by aid groups is “racing against time” to save more than 2,400 people trapped by increasing flood waters in the town of Luuq, on the road connecting the Somalia-Ethiopia border with Baidoa, UN agency OCHA said.
El Nino, which activates higher world temperatures, is likely to last until at least April 2024, the UN stated on Wednesday.
The World Meteorological Organization also highlighted that the phenomenon was taking place in the context of fast climate change.
Similarly, 15 people have been killed due to flash flooding in Kenya, 20 people have passed away and more than 12,000 been forced to leave their homes in Ethiopia.
From October 1997 to January 1998, shocking floods caused by El Nino led to over 6,000 deaths in five nations in the Horn of Africa.
