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KINSHASA. – Dead bodies were still being recovered on Monday from two villages in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo where floods killed more than 400 people last week in one of the country’s deadliest disasters in recent history.
Many dazed survivors were mourning multiple family members killed in the flash floods that swept away entire homes and buried the villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi, both in South Kivu province, in muck and debris.
“Over there in the mud, that’s where our house was. We lost six people in our family. In our house, five children died and our mother who is the sixth,” said 22-year-old Alliance Mufanzara, pointing at an empty plot of churned earth.
She, her younger brother, and father are the only survivors.
“We’re scared because our whole family is finished,” she said. “We have nothing.”
Humanitarian workers have spent days recovering mud-caked bodies from the wrecked villages in Kalehe territory, where days of torrential rain triggered landslides and caused rivers to break their banks last Thursday.
“It is an unprecedented humanitarian disaster,” said government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya.
The large number of casualties has meant workers have had to bury victims in freshly dug mass graves, according to videos posted online. – Reuters
Online Reporter