Since the beginning of the month, ferocious rainstorms have hit Somalia and its neighbours Kenya and Ethiopia, triggering landslides and submerging villages and farms.
The flooding comes after Somalia and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya suffered the region's worst drought in four decades.
"We warned earlier about these rains and predicted this situation was coming," Mohamed Moalim Abdullahi, chairman of Somalia Disaster Management Agency, said late Tuesday.
At least 29 people have died and about 850,000 others have been affected, Abdullahi said, including over 300,000 who have been uprooted from their homes.
The most affected regions were in the southwest of the strife-weary nation of 17 million people.
The UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, on Wednesday said rescue efforts were being delayed because roads had been cut.
"Inaccessible roads and stuck vehicles are just some of the challenges aid workers in Somalia are grappling with," it said on X, formerly Twitter.
A joint effort by aid agencies is "racing against time" to rescue 2,400 people trapped by rising flood waters in the town of Luuq, on the road linking the Somalia-Ethiopia border with Baidoa, OCHA added.
Somalia, as much as the Horn of Africa, is considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis as it battles a deadly Islamist insurgency.
El Nino, which triggers higher global temperatures, is expected to last until at least April 2024, the United Nations said on Wednesday.
The World Meteorological Organization highlighted that the phenomenon was occurring in the context of rapid climate change.
Already, at least 15 people have been killed in Kenya due to flash flooding, while more than 20 people have died and over 12,000 been forced from their homes in Ethiopia's Somali region.
Between October 1997 and January 1998, devastating floods caused by El Nino led to more than 6,000 deaths in five countries in the Horn of Africa.
At least 1,800 people died in Somalia where the Juba River burst its banks.
From October to November 2006, flooding caused by unseasonal rains left more than 140 people dead in Somalia, with many drowned but others killed by crocodiles or succumbing to a malaria epidemic.
S.Sudan floods leave 1.6 million children at risk of hunger: UN
Nairobi (AFP) Nov 6, 2023 -
More than 1.6 million children aged under five will suffer from malnutrition next year in South Sudan, following a surge in waterborne diseases due to flooding, the UN's World Food Programme said Monday.
The world's newest nation has endured deadly conflict, natural disasters, economic malaise and relentless political infighting since it won independence from Sudan in 2011.
As flooding becomes an annual affair in some parts of the country, people living in waterlogged areas have struggled to access food while also grappling with the spread of disease.
"More than 1.6 million children under five years of age are expected to suffer from malnutrition in 2024," the WFP said.
In Rubkona county, where floodwaters have submerged large tracts of land, forcing entire communities to live on small islands since 2021, the cost of food staples has climbed by more than 120 percent since April.
The county, which lies in the north of the country, is forecast to face catastrophic levels of hunger by April 2024.
- 'Hunger emergency' -
"This is the reality of living on the frontline of the climate crisis," said Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP's country director in Juba.
"We're seeing an extremely concerning rise in malnutrition which is a direct result of living in overcrowded and waterlogged conditions," she said.
"The spread of waterborne diseases unravels any work humanitarian agencies do in preventing and treating malnutrition and it is young children who are suffering the impact most severely," she added.
The crisis has been compounded by the return of hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees fleeing Sudan's brutal war, with WFP warning last month that families were facing "a hunger emergency".
Since fighting erupted in Sudan in mid-April, more than 10,000 people have lost their lives, according to a conservative estimate from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.
Multiple truces have failed to stop the violence that has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis engulfing the wider region.
One of the world's poorest nations, South Sudan has spent nearly half its life at war, with some 380,000 people killed during a five-year civil war between rival leaders who share power today.
The United Nations has repeatedly criticised South Sudan's leadership for its role in stoking bloodshed, cracking down on political freedoms and plundering public coffers.
South Sudan has large oil reserves but it remains in a "serious humanitarian crisis," according to the World Bank.
It said in September that about 9.4 million people or 76 percent of the population were estimated to be in need of humanitarian assistance in 2023.
Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
When the Earth Quakes
A world of storm and tempest
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
| Subscribe Free To Our Daily Newsletters |
