According to local authorities, about 40 more people have perished in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo after torrential rains unleashed floods and landslides on Tuesday night that left residents digging through the mud to find bodies.
A witness had told Reuters that in Bukavu city, onlookers congregated to watch as a group of men pulled a car out of the mud to recover a woman’s body from underneath on Wednesday.
At the time of filing this report, least 20 people have died in Bukavu and about 20 more were killed in the village of Burinyi.
Inadequate urban planning and poor infrastructure make communities more susceptive to extreme rainfall, which is becoming more extreme and frequent in Africa due to the warming temperatures, according to United Nations climate experts.
A Bukavu official, Emmanuel Majivuno Kalimba had told Reuters journalists at the scene, –as residents worked hard to retrieve belongings from their damaged homes– that when rain falls, the main waterway gets congested, sometimes because of the waste, it gets flooded and affects the houses nearby.
The overnight destruction follows the deaths of 22 people in the Kasai-Central province on Tuesday when a landslide engulfed houses, churches and roads, killing entire families and leaving the surviving ones homeless.
