Flooding in Tunisia kills 6 People

Six people, including three children, were killed in 6 days in Tunisia, due to the flooding in several regions, including the capital, Tunis, the Saudi Press Agency (SPA) reported on Saturday.

Several regions in Tunisia witnessed heavy rainfall, causing damages to homes, shops and even hospitals.

Noteworthy, the Sudanese Security and Defense Council decided to declare a state of emergency in all parts of the country for 3 months, due to the torrents and floods that hit the country.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees sent a humanitarian aid for those affected by the floods in Khartoum.

According to Reuters, flooding regularly happens in Sudan during summer, but this year’s unprecedented water levels have left larger tracts of farmland submerged, but also have spilled over into major roads in Khartoum for the first time in living memory.

“The waters of the Nile flooded our house at midnight yesterday,” said Ahmed Bastawy, a resident of Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman, who stayed up all night trying to protect his house only to see some of its mud brick walls collapse.

“We have never seen flooding like this. Authorities provided us with soil and sacks, but we failed to block the waters and the houses were destroyed.”

On his part, Irrigation Minister Yasser Abbas said today that the average level of the Blue Nile has reached 17.43 metres, the highest since the country started measuring in 1912.

The bad news were spelled by Abdelrahman Sughairun, head of the ministry’s flood committee when he said that Blue Nile waters would continue to rise in the coming days.

According to Interior Ministry, the floods had left 86 people dead, destroyed more than 18,000 homes and damaged a further 32,000.

The flooding comes despite Ethiopia starting to fill the reservoir behind a giant new dam upstream on the Blue Nile in July; the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is expected to help Sudan control future floods.

The reservoir behind the GERD is expected to be gradually filled over the next few years as the dam begins to operate, though Ethiopia is yet to agree on its operating terms with downstream countries Sudan and Egypt.

“After the filling of the Renaissance Dam it’s expected that floods won’t happen,” Abbas said.