At least 127 people have been killed in Rwanda in floods and landslides caused by heavy seasonal rains, which also destroyed many homes and cut off roads in the small East African country.
“To date”, 127 people have died in the western, northern and southern provinces after torrential rains overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday, the presidency announced.
In the most affected districts of Rubavu, Ngororero, Nyabihu (West), Gakenke, Burera, Musanze (North) and Nyamagabe (South), operations are underway to allow “the evacuation and temporary relocation of residents of the affected areas and high risk while the rains continue,” she added.
Images posted on the Twitter account of the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency (RBA), which oversees public audiovisual media, show extensive damage including destroyed houses, overturned sheet metal roofs, roads cut by landslides , flooded fields and mudslides.
In Rubavu, residents were taken by surprise. The Sebaya River, which flows into Lake Kivu a few kilometers away, has notably come out of its bed.
“I was at home with my children, but we managed to escape before it collapsed,” one of the residents, Jane Munyemana, told AFP: “We plan to remove the water and sleep inside tonight, but we’re worried it might rain again and destroy what’s left.”
Visiting the city, the deputy government spokesman told AFP that the authorities were organizing the reception of residents in tents and public buildings, including schools.
“None of them should spend one more night in their house, they should go to the sites (reception) closest to their homes,” said Alain Mukuralinda.
In the district of Ngororero, further south of the Western province, the flood of the Nyabarongo river has cut off the main traffic route, “making the district inaccessible by road”, adds the RBA, warning that the level of the stream “continues to rise”.
“When the floods started, there were huge landslides which knocked down trees and engulfed the road. Our plantations were also washed away,” said a woman interviewed by the RBA in the Northern Province.
Seasonal rains that hit East Africa have also been deadly in Uganda.
Six people were killed in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the region of Kisoro, in the south-west of the country, not far from the Rwandan border, announced the local Red Cross.
Five of the victims come from the same family in the village of Biizi, underlines the organization.
Footage released by the Uganda Red Cross shows residents digging into a mudslide on the hillside and homes sunk to the roof.
East Africa regularly experiences episodes of flooding during the rainy seasons.
By May 2020, at least 65 people had died in Rwanda, as East Africa was hit by heavy seasonal rains that also claimed at least 194 lives in Kenya.
At the end of 2019, two months of incessant rains that led to floods and mudslides had killed at least 265 people and displaced hundreds of thousands in the region, including in Burundi, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and South Sudan.
In 2018, more than 200 people were killed in Rwanda by floods and landslides in the first four months of the year.
In 2016, torrential rains caused the death of around fifty people in landslides in Rwanda, particularly in the district of Gakenke.
03/05/2023 22:46:59 — Kigali (AFP) © 2023 AFP
