Floods and landslides triggered by torrential rains on Thursday in South Kivu, in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), left at least 394 dead, half of the bodies were found in the last 24 hours, according to the latest balance of victims released by the regional official, Thomas Bakenga, administrator of the Kalehe territory, where the affected villages are located.
Specifically, 142 bodies were found in Bushushu, 132 in Nyamukubi and "120 were found floating in Lake Kivu" at the level of the island of Idjwi, Bakenga declared this Sunday afternoon to the AFP agency. Together with Chavondo, these two towns were the most affected by the sudden rise of the rivers. “Since Thursday, we find bodies every minute and bury them,” she added.
“It seems like the end of the world. I am looking for my parents and my children ”, laments Gentille Ndagijimana to AFP, with tears in her eyes. At 27, Gentille and her family are from Masisi in neighboring North Kivu province, fleeing fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels in January and finding refuge here. She lost her two children, her two sisters and her parents. Her injured husband is in the hospital. "I no longer have a family and I don't have a field. Now I have to find a place to sleep...", the young woman continues sadly.
At the foot of the green hills of the Kalehe territory, on the western shore of Lake Kivu, on the border with Rwanda, a desert landscape of mud and stones has taken over an entire neighborhood. There were houses, a market, two schools, a health center, a multipurpose room, a warehouse. Nothing remains. On Thursday night, under the effect of heavy rains, the Nyamukubi and Chishova rivers burst their banks, washing away everything in their path.
"I had come home from work, I left my motorcycle at home and went out to see some friends. When I returned, my house, my motorcycle and my relatives had disappeared," Roger Bahavu, father of seven children, told the French agency. They are all dead, his mother too and his grandmother. "Of eleven people in the family, we only have two left," says the father of the family sadly, who hopes to find the bodies of his family.
"The provincial government provided assistance: a ship full of food (beans, flour), tarpaulins, medicines...", Bakenga reported. And Kinshasa announced on Friday the sending of a "government mission to support the provincial government in managing this disaster." He also declared a day of national mourning on Monday. Doctors Without Borders (MSF) sent one of its emergency teams to the scene on Saturday.
But it is insufficient. "There are many bodies, we are overwhelmed," laments Isaac Habamungu, a local Red Cross agent. "We think a lot of bodies have been washed up in the lake... We're wondering how we're going to get out of this," Isaac adds. "We don't have body bags, there's no funding for what we do," he laments. The teams, he continues, dig for the bodies "with their hands and a few shovels." They wrap the bodies in blankets or sheets before burying them in mass graves.
Terminal for all the sick and injured, the only operational health center in the area is a private institution, the "hospital for the promotion of maternal and child health" which, also overwhelmed, has to deal with the lack of medicines, nursing staff and beds. "We are waiting for the government's response, to help us send" the most serious cases to larger hospitals, and to "provide us with medicines to care for others," says Dr. Bauma Ngola, the hospital's medical director.
The disaster came two days after flooding that killed at least 131 people and destroyed thousands of homes in neighboring Rwanda. The type of soil in eastern DRC and Rwanda, highly vulnerable to erosion, is easily weakened by factors such as torrential rains, sometimes leading to such accidents.
The head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, stressed this Saturday during a visit to Burundi that it is "a new example of an acceleration of climate change and its dramatic consequences for countries that are not involved in global warming" of the planet. .
