DRC- A total of 30 people are reported to have died over the weekend following heavy rains have triggered severe flooding from a key river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo capital Kinshasa.
The Provincial Health Minister Patricien Gongo provided the death toll on Sunday but stressed it was provisional and most of the fatalities in the deluge, he added, were caused by collapsing walls.
The Ndjili River, which cuts through the Kinshasa city of nearly 17 million people, burst its banks submerging the main national road and motorists were left stranded for hours, with some spending the entire night in their cars.
“On the way home from the airport last night to welcome a friend, we spent the night in the car because there was no safe place to park,” Patricia Mikonga, a Kinshasa resident told journalists.
Kinshasa City Governor Daniel Bumba Lubaki said water infrastructure had been damaged but assured residents that supply would be restored within days and blamed illegal housing for some of the deaths and warned that people living in unplanned settlements could face eviction.
Many neighbourhoods were plunged into darkness, while others suffered water shortages.
A reknown environmentalist in Kinshasa Raphael Tshimanga Muamba said human activity had worsened the river’s condition over time.
“These are anthropogenic actions where rivers are degraded; their dimensions no longer represent their initial capacity to contain floods,” He said.
The flooding comes as the country faces mounting instability with conflict in the Eastern part of the country where the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels have made attacks there since the start of the year, with more than 7,000 people killed and millions displaced in recent months.
Additional Reporting from Associated Press
