Dozens Killed, Thousands Trapped in Somalia’s Worst Flood in Decades

Somalia’s are struggling to cope with never-before-seen flooding that has killed dozens of people, and forced hundreds of thousands to abandon their homes, in the wake of extreme rainfall that has engulfed much of East Africa.

Somalia’s National Disaster Management Agency said on Wednesday that following days of heavy torrents, at least 29 people have been killed and more than 300,000 have fled their homes for safety.

The extreme rain presents a new challenge for the horn of Africa country, which is still reeling from a record drought that crippled its agriculture and killed as many as 43,000 people last year.

The flooding in Somalia is part of a regional deluge linked to ongoing weather patterns known as El Nino and the Indian Ocean dipole which impact ocean surface temperatures and cause extreme rainfall, experts say.

The phenomenon has sparked turmoil in neighboring states Kenya and Ethiopia.

Scientists say climate change is causing more intense and more frequent extreme weather events, with the horn of Africa especially vulnerable.

The flooding comes after Somalia and parts of Ethiopia and Kenya suffered the region’s worst drought in four decades.

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“We warned earlier about these rains and predicted this situation was coming,” Mohamed Moalim Abdullahi, chairman of Somalia Disaster Management Agency, said late Tuesday.

At least 29 people have died and about 850,000 others have been affected, Abdullahi said, including over 300,000 who have been uprooted from their homes.

The most affected regions were in the southwest of the strife-weary nation of 17 million people.

The UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, on Wednesday said rescue efforts were being delayed because roads had been cut.

“Inaccessible roads and stuck vehicles are just some of the challenges aid workers in Somalia are grappling with,” it said on X, formerly Twitter.

A joint effort by aid agencies is “racing against time” to rescue 2,400 people trapped by rising flood waters in the town of Luuq, on the road linking the Somalia-Ethiopia border with Baidoa, OCHA added.

Somalia, as much as the Horn of Africa, is considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change but is particularly ill-equipped to cope with the crisis as it battles a deadly Islamist insurgency.

The World Meteorological Organization highlighted that the phenomenon was occurring in the context of rapid climate change.

Already, at least 15 people have been killed in Kenya due to flash flooding, while more than 20 people have died and over 12,000 been forced from their homes in Ethiopia’s Somali region.

Between October 1997 and January 1998, devastating floods caused by El Nino led to more than 6,000 deaths in five countries in the Horn of Africa.

At least 1,800 people died in Somalia where the Juba River burst its banks.