Torrential rain in South Kivu province causes river to overflow, leading to significant damage in Bushushu and Nyamukubi villages.
Torrential rain in South Kivu province in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo has caused a river to overflow and led to significant damage and loss of life in the villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi, the provincial government says in a statement without providing a death toll.
But a Reuters news agency reporter in Bushushu saw humanitarian workers recovering bodies from the debris on Friday and counted at least 72, many of whom were women and children.
The weather had cleared, revealing flattened houses and corrugated iron roofs jutting out from beneath thick layers of mud, photos showed.
Haggard-looking survivors stood outside a wooden shed in which Red Cross workers in blue scrubs piled bodies on top of each other. Many had lost clothing and were covered in dirt.
Local administrator Thomas Bakenga said on Thursday night that at least 17 people had been killed in the floods and that around 40 people were missing.
Floods and landslides are not an uncommon occurrence in South Kivu.
The last incident of a similar scale occurred in October 2014 when heavy rain destroyed more than 700 homes. Over 130 people were reported missing at the time, according to the United Nations.
Heavy rainfall and floods have led to tragedies in other parts of the country as well.
Last month, at least 21 people died and several were reported missing a day after a landslide in North Kivu province.
In December, at least 169 people were killed due to rains in the capital, Kinshasa.
Ongoing crises
The floods add to an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the eastern DRC due to decades of violence from multiple armed groups.
The region has been plagued by fighting by at least 122 rebel groups for more than 25 years, according to a recent count by the United Nations. Consequently, millions of people have been displaced, the Norwegian Refugee Council said in a report in June. The DRC is home to more than 5.5 million internally displaced people, the third-highest number in the world. A million other Congolese have also fled the country.
Multiple reports put food shortages at the highest level ever recorded with 27 million people – a third of the country’s population – going hungry.
