Somalia floods kill seven, displace 200 families
MOGADISHU (AFP)At least seven people were killed in an overnight devastating flood in Somalia's capital Mogadishu, local government officials said on Saturday.Torrential rains, which started on Friday night and lasted about 10 hours, touched off the floods that displaced more than 200 families.Nine houses were completely destroyed across various districts of Mogadishu, while six major tarmac roads were also damaged."Seven people died, two of them women," Salah Omar Hassan, the spokesman of the Banadir regional administration, said in a press conference.Hassan added, "The floods also swept through the houses of 200 families while destroying six key tarmac roads, which are very important for the movement of transport and people in the capital Mogadishu."A UN report published on April 30 revealed that more than 45,000 people have been affected by flash floods in Somalia since mid-April. The Horn of Africa is one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change, and extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent and intense.
Somalia was hit by intense floods in 2023. More than 100 people were killed and over a million displaced after severe flooding caused by torrential rains linked to the El Nino weather pattern.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Etihad
2 hours ago
- Al Etihad
Eight dead, 31 missing in floods on China-Nepal border
8 July 2025 23:36 KATHMANDU (AFP)Floods triggered by torrential rains tore down a Himalayan mountain valley between China and Nepal on Tuesday, with at least eight killed and 31 missing, officials and state media wall of water also swept away one of the main bridges linking Nepal and China over the Bhotekoshi floods and landslides are common across South Asia during the monsoon season from June to September but experts say climate change is making them Nepal, eight bodies have been recovered and 20 others -- 14 Nepalis and six Chinese -- are listed as missing, according to police."Our focus is on search and rescue efforts. We have rescued 57 people so far," Nepal police spokesperson Binod Ghimire told state television CCTV reported that a "mudslide disaster" hit the border area around dawn on Tuesday, with 11 people missing on the Chinese said those were in addition to six Chinese construction workers swept away on the Nepal intense floods and droughts are a "distress signal" of what is coming as climate change makes the planet's water cycle ever more unpredictable, the UN's World Meteorological Organization said last the Kathmandu-based International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) warned in June that communities face heightened disaster risks this monsoon season. 'Rising temperatures and more extreme rain raise the risk of water-induced disasters such as floods, landslides, and debris flows,' ICIMOD said.
Al Etihad
2 hours ago
- Al Etihad
Death toll in Texas floods climbs to 108, with more rain expected
8 July 2025 23:29 HUNT, US (AFP)Hundreds of rescuers on Tuesday continued their search for people swept away by catastrophic Texas floods that killed more than 100 people, officials said, amid threats of more heavy of Tuesday morning, authorities in worst-hit Kerr County had recovered the bodies of 87 victims, Sheriff Larry Leitha told deceased include at least 27 girls and counselors who were staying at a youth summer camp on the Guadalupe River over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.'At present, five Camp Mystic campers and one counselor still remain unaccounted for,' Leitha least 108 flood-related deaths were reported across central Texas, according to local a Cabinet meeting, President Donald Trump said he would travel to Texas with First Lady Melania Trump on Friday, and credited his strong ties with the state's Republican governor as having helped the rescue effort.'We brought in a lot of helicopters from all over... They were real pros, and they were responsible for pulling out a lot of people. And we got them there fast, and Texas had some good ones too, but the response was incredible,' Trump who previously said that disaster relief should be handled at the state level, earlier this week signed a major disaster declaration, activating fresh federal funds and freeing up resources. Officials warned that with more heavy rain forecast, recovery efforts would be rendered even more difficult.
Gulf Today
3 hours ago
- Gulf Today
Hopes fade for missing Texas flood victims as death toll hovers around 100
Search teams plodded through muddy riverbanks and flew aircraft over flood-ravaged central Texas on Monday as hopes dimmed of finding survivors among dozens still missing from a disaster that has claimed at least 96 lives, many of them children. Three days after a torrential predawn downpour transformed the Guadalupe River into a raging, killer torrent, a Christian girls' summer camp devastated by the flash flood confirmed that 27 campers and counselors were among those who had perished. Ten girls and a camp counselor were still unaccounted for, officials said on Monday, as search-and-rescue personnel faced the potential of more heavy rains and thunderstorms while clawing through tons of muck-laden debris. The bulk of the death toll from Friday's calamity was concentrated in and around the riverfront town of Kerrville and the grounds of Camp Mystic, situated in a swath of Texas Hill Country known as "flash flood alley." By Monday afternoon, the bodies of 84 flood victims - 56 adults and 28 children - were recovered in Kerr County, most of them in the county seat of Kerrville, according to the local sheriff. As of midday Sunday, state and local officials said 12 other flood-related fatalities had been confirmed across five neighboring south-central Texas counties, and that 41 other people were still listed as missing outside Kerr County. The New York Times, one of numerous news media outlets publishing varying death tolls, reported that at least 104 people had been killed across the entire flood zone. Caution tape covers the entrance of Camp Mystic in Hunt, Texas, on Monday. AFP Debate also intensified over questions about how state and local officials reacted to weather alerts forecasting the possibility of a flash flood and the lack of an early warning siren system that might have mitigated the disaster. On Monday, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick vowed that the state would "step up" to pay for installing a flash-flood warning system in Kerrville by next summer if local governments "can't afford it." "There should have been sirens," Patrick said in a Fox News interview. "Had we had sirens here along this possible that we would have saved some lives." 'ROUGH WEEK' AHEAD While authorities continued to hold out hope that some of the missing would turn up alive, the likelihood of finding more survivors diminished as time passed. "This will be a rough week," Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr said at a briefing on Monday morning. Camp Mystic, a nearly century-old Christian girls' retreat on the banks of the Guadalupe was at the epicenter of the disaster. "Our hearts are broken alongside our families that are enduring this unimaginable tragedy," the camp said in a statement on Monday. Richard "Dick" Eastland, 70, Mystic's co-owner and director, died trying to save children at his camp from the flood, local news media reported. He and his wife, Tweety Eastland, have owned the camp since 1974, according to its website. "If he wasn't going to die of natural causes, this was the only other way, saving the girls that he so loved and cared for," Eastland's grandson, George Eastland, wrote on Instagram. MISHAP IN THE SKY Authorities lost one of their aviation assets on Monday when a privately operated drone collided in restricted airspace over the Kerr County flood zone with a search helicopter, forcing the chopper to make an emergency landing. No injuries were reported, but the aircraft was put out of commission, according to the Kerr County Sheriff's Office. National Weather Service forecasts on Monday predicted that up to 4 more inches of rain could douse Texas Hill Country, with isolated areas possibly receiving as much as 10 inches (25 cm). A woman holds a candle during a vigil for the victims of the floods over Fourth of July weekend, at Travis Park, in San Antonio, Texas, on Monday. AFP Officials said the region remained especially vulnerable to renewed flooding due to the saturated condition of the soil and mounds of debris already strewn around the river channel. State emergency management officials had warned on Thursday, ahead of the July 4 holiday, that parts of central Texas faced the possibility of flash floods based on National Weather Service forecasts. But twice as much rain as was predicted ended up falling over two branches of the Guadalupe just upstream of the fork where they converge, sending all of that water racing into the single river channel where it slices through Kerrville, City Manager Dalton Rice said. Rice said the outcome was unforeseen and unfolded in a matter of two hours, leaving too little time to conduct a precautionary mass evacuation without the risk of placing more people in harm's way. Authorities in flood-prone areas like the Guadalupe River basin also must balance the odds of misjudging a catastrophe against not wanting to "cry wolf," he said. Still, a team of European scientists said climate change has helped fuel warmer, wetter weather patterns that make extreme rain and flood events more likely. "Events of this kind are no longer exceptional in a warming world," said Davide Faranda, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). "Climate change loads the dice toward more frequent and more intense floods." The Houston Chronicle and New York Times reported that Kerr County officials had considered installing a flood-warning system about eight years ago but dropped the effort as too costly after failing to secure a $1 million grant to fund the project. Reuters
