At least 65 lives have been lost to floods in Rwanda with heavy rains sweeping away scores of houses, bridges and farms, officials reported.
“Heavy rains that poured Wednesday night caused a number of disasters,” Rwanda’s ministry of emergency management said in a statement after days of overflow.
“Up until midnight, 65 death cases had been registered due to floods. The rains also led to damage of infrastructure like roads, 91 houses, 5 bridges and several farms were swept away by the floors,” AFP quoted officials as saying.
In April 20 people were killed in flooding in Rwanda.
Similar scenes have also played out across East Africa as floods and landslides have killed nearly 200 people in Kenya in the past month, while Uganda’s Lake Victoria has overflown, submerging houses, a hospital and bridges and displacing thousands.
The Red Cross issued a statement Thursday saying thousands were displaced in Uganda after two rivers burst their banks, and a major hospital in western Kasese had partly been submerged by water.
“We lost four people after the heavy rains in last four days pounded the district. Some were buried by the flash floods which have displaced over 5,000 people”, Ugandan MP Alex Byarugaba from Isingiro, a border district with Tanzania, told AFP.
Somalia has also experienced flooding in several areas, with six people killed in northeastern Puntland last month.