Wednesday, December 06, 2006
More than 40,000 people have been forced from their homes in southern Somalia's Jamame district alone by raging waters from the Juba River, which burst its banks here about 10 days ago, according to aid workers.
The floods have compounded the misery of those living here, already beset by the threat of war between the weak Somali government and powerful Islamists and still recovering from a scorching drought that ended only earlier this year.
Milling around the dozens of huts that make up Arare, a makeshift camp for the flood displaced, village elder Abdi Nur Mohamed Dedud said he was forced to seek shelter after giving up the fight against a relentless surge of water.
"We were working all night," he said. "It was two o'clock in the morning and when we put the sandbags down, the water would rise above them.
"Everybody ran with their children, the water moved faster than people," Dedud said. "It was crisis after crisis. This is worse than the drought."
Abdullah Musa, a father of five children between four- and 10-years-old, said he, too, had fought a losing battle to save his home from the floods and arrived at the camp like most others over the past week.
"The water was coming into our houses," he said, as a short distance away, people waded waist-deep through brown water around submerged trees and houses often visible only by their exposed corrugated iron roofs.
"Everything was washed out," Musa said.
The floods, the man-eating crocodiles they have unleashed and waterborne disease, have killed about 120 people in Somalia since late October when unusally heavy seasonal rains began, according to an AFP survey.
In neighboring Ethiopia and Somalia, also hit hard by the floods, the death toll stands at 80 and 51, bringing the regional total to 251 with hundreds of thousands homeless and more than a million affected in the three countries.
All three were also stricken by the drought, which threatened some 11 million people in the Horn of Africa, and has exacerbated the flood damage because the parched soil was unable to absorb the torrential rains.
Urgent appeals for assistance have gone out from authorities there as well as the United Nations and private relief groups and on a visit to Arare Wednesday the World Food Programme warned the situation could get worse.
Although it has not rained here in three days, downpours continue further north, creating the potential for the already swollen Juba River to flood anew, a WFP official said.
"If the floods come down overnight, people may well have their food stocks washed away," WFP spokeswoman Penny Ferguson said.
WFP has sent 1,170 tonnes of food aid to Jamame district and intends to keep up supplies until February.
Source: AFP, Dec 06, 2006