4 yıl önce

Sudan declares three-month state of emergency over floods

Nearly 100 people have died from the floods and around half a million people have been affected, with more than 100,000 houses fully or partially destroyed.

AFP

A Sudanese boy wades through a flooded street at Alqamayir area in the capital's twin city of Omdurman on August 26, 2020.

Sudanese authorities have declared their country a natural disaster area and imposed a three-month state of emergency across the country after rising floodwaters and heavy rainfall killed around 100 people and inundated over 100,000 houses since late July.

The announcement was made late on Friday following a meeting of the country’s defence and security council, which is headed by a top government official, General Abdel Fattah Burhan.

Flooding caused by seasonal heavy rainfall, mostly in neighbouring Ethiopia, led the Nile River to rise about 17.5 metres late in August, the highest level it has reached in about a century according to the Sudanese Irrigation Ministry.

The ministry said water levels of the Blue Nile are higher than the 1988 flood levels that destroyed tens of thousands of homes in several parts of Sudan and displaced over one million people.

Labor and Social Development Minister Lina al Sheikh said the flooding had killed 99 people, as well as injured at least 46 people and affected more than 500,000 people across the country. More than 100,000 houses across the country totally or partly collapsed, she said.

The UN humanitarian agency has warned that the situation is expected to get worse over the coming weeks, as above-average rains are forecast until the end of September.

Mitigating the damage

The capital of Khartoum was hit hard in the past two weeks. Residents in several districts of the city were seen erecting barricades and other shields as water from the Nile swept through several neighbourhoods, in footage circulating online.

The military deployed troops to help evacuate people and build barricades in Khartoum as well as distribute food, after flooding there cut roads and swept away houses and belongings.

The rates of floods and rain for this year exceeded the records set during the years 1946 and 1988, with expectations of continued rising indicators, Sheikh added.

The council also announced the formation of a supreme committee headed by the ministry of labour and social development to deal with the ramifications of the floods for the fall of 2020, state agency SUNA said.

Disruption to life

Earlier this week, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, or OCHA, said access to clean water, which is critical amid the coronavirus pandemic, has also been reduced, with the floods knocking out or contaminating some 2,000 water sources.

OCHA said last week that the flooding also damaged at least 43 schools and 2,671 health facilities across the country and that large swaths of agricultural land across the country were also flooded in the middle of the harvest season.

The UN refugee agency, or UNHCR, said tens of thousands of refugees and internally displaced people were affected, particularly in North Darfur province, where 15 people have died and a further 23 have gone missing.

OCHA urged wider support from the international community, as a $1.6 billion humanitarian plan for Sudan is less than 44 percent funded and aid stocks have been "depleted rapidly".

Seasonal rains and flooding last year left a total of 78 people dead in 16 of Sudan’s 18 provinces, between July and August, according to the UN.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies