The torrential rains kill around thirty people in Kinshasa – Liberation

Thirty people died on Saturday April 5 after torrential rains in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the bad weather also caused significant damage, local authorities announced on Sunday. « There are a lot of injured who have been evacuated and for the moment we are about thirty dead, » Dr. Patrician Gongo Abakazi, provincial public health minister in Kinshasa, told AFP. The victims died drowned or killed in the collapse of the walls of their homes, he said.

The rains fallen on the night of Friday to Saturday in Kinhsasa as well as in the neighboring province of Kongo-Central caused « Huge material and human damage », According to a press release from the authorities. After the rains, the waters gradually mounted on Saturday morning, devastating several peripheral and disadvantaged districts of the mega -cities of 17 million inhabitants, marked by anarchic urbanization.

The rise of waters has also cut traffic on the national road 1, the main road axis in the capital, which leads from the city center to the airport, as well as in many neighboring districts. The floods also caused giant traffic jams in a city where the streets are already chronically engorged.

In Kinshasa, rains and floods regularly victims. In November 2019, around forty people died in the capital, victims of violent rains who had caused floods and landslides. Three years later, a similar new episode had killed at least 55 people.