Some villages in eastern DRC were completely destroyed. A landslide killed 30 people in a mine.
Hundreds of people are still missing after torrential rains, landslides and flooding in eastern DRC. A government spokesman put the death toll at 401 after last week’s landslides in the Kalehe region of South Kivu province on Tuesday. At least 267 people are still missing there.
In the neighboring province of North Kivu, there was a landslide at a mine on Monday. A spokesman for the miners said on Tuesday that about 30 people were killed in the accident. The aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, meanwhile, sent an emergency team to Kalehe. “Some villages were completely destroyed by the floods,” emergency coordinator Ulrich Crepin Namfeibona said in a statement released on Tuesday. The floods would have swept away homes, land and livestock. The number of victims is also high because the accident happened on a market day and in one of the affected places there were about twice as many people as usual because of traders and buyers.
Many impassable roads
The rescue operation is hampered because many roads in the crash area are impassable, including the important road linking Bukavu and Goma. Nearly 40 seriously injured survivors were rescued by boats, it said. Given the poor hygienic conditions, there is now a risk of disease spreading.
According to Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe, partner organizations at the disaster site estimate that around 100,000 people in the region will be affected. Local authorities asked for help, according to Gilbert Masumbuko of Diakonie Katastrophenhilfe.
Congo’s eastern Kivu provinces have been the scene of fighting between various armed militias and government troops for years. Numerous people live as internally displaced people in makeshift camps. Around 100,000 people are said to have sought refuge in the Kalehe region alone.
(APA/dpa)