Deadly rainy season in East Africa: 155 dead in Tanzania, 13 in Kenya

The rainy season, aggravated by the El Niño climate phenomenon, has deadly consequences in East Africa: Tanzania announced Thursday that 155 people had died in various disasters and in neighboring Kenya floods had killed 13 people.

In Tanzania, heavy rains in recent weeks have caused floods and landslides in various parts of the country, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa told Parliament.

“More than 51,000 homes and 200,000 people were affected, with 155 deaths, around 236 people were injured and more than 10,000 homes were damaged to varying degrees,” he listed, without specifying the period over which the deaths occurred. were identified.

Thursday, neighboring Kenya continued to count the dead and search for the missing, the day after flooding in several neighborhoods of the capital Nairobi and in neighboring counties , cutting roads and railways.

The death toll rose to 13, after the discovery on Thursday of three bodies in the Mathare slum, one of the most hard hit, Fred Abuga, police commander of Starehe sub-county, in the center of the city, told AFP.

Before these floods, at least 32 people had died and more than 40,000 had been displaced in the country since the start of the rainy season in March, according to the UN humanitarian agency (Ocha).

Flooding after heavy rains in Nairobi, Kenya, April 24, 2024 © AFP – Tony KARUMBA

“We need to put everyone on alert,” Kenyan President William Ruto said during a meeting to coordinate a “multi-agency” response to these floods, emphasizing the need to relocate residents from threatened areas.< /p>

Vice President Rigathi Gachagua also warned the population about “forecasts for next week (which) indicate that the country will experience above-normal rainfall”.

– Until May –

Several other countries in the region are affected by unusually heavy rainfall, caused by a new episode of El Niño which began in mid-2023 and could last until May, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned on March 5.

Residents of the Mathare slum near their homes destroyed by heavy rains in Nairobi, Kenya, April 24, 2024 © AFP – SIMON MAINA

In addition to increasing temperatures, El Niño causes droughts in some parts of the world and heavy rains in others.

In Burundi, the authorities reported last week that 96,000 people had been internally displaced due to almost incessant rains for several months.

In Somalia, at least four people were killed since April 19 after flash floods, according to OCHA.

El Niño has already wreaked havoc in Eastern Africa in the past.

Residents of the Mathare slum dry their mattresses on the roofs after heavy rains in Nairobi, April 24, 2024 in Kenya © AFP – SIMON MAINA

In December, at least 89 people were killed in landslides and floods caused by heavy rains in northern Tanzania.

Across the region, more than 300 people died. In Somalia, more than a million people were displaced by floods.

From October 1997 to January 1998, gigantic floods fueled by torrential rains caused by El Niño caused more than 6,000 deaths in five countries in the region.

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