More than 120 people were reported dead on Tuesday after floods rummaged through DR Congo’s capital Kinshasa after a night of heavy rains.
The death toll — which was first estimated in the late afternoon to be at least 55 — jumped to more than 120 by nightfall.
According to a provisional assessment by authorities, Major roads in the center of Kinshasa, a city of some 15 million people, were submerged for hours, and a key supply route was cut off.
The Government declared a three-day mourning period on Wednesday through a statement issued by the prime minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde’s office.
“We were woken up at around 4:00 am (0300 GMT) by water entering the house,”
“We drained the water out and thinking that there was no more danger we went back indoors to sleep — we were soaked,” a resident told AFP.
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City police chief General Sylvano Kasongo told AFP that the bulk of people dead were on hillside locations where there had been landslides.
Most of the affected were people living in shanty-like houses in the hilly district of Mont-Ngafula, smothering National Highway 1, a key supply route linking the capital with Matadi, a port further down the Congo River and a crucial outlet to the Atlantic Ocean, where a major landslide occurred.
Also engulfed by the floods were the rarely affected streets of the up-market Gombe district — home to the government.