- By WillRoss
- Africa Editor, BBC World Service
May 7, 2023
Updated 39 minutes ago
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The villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi were engulfed by floodwaters
Almost 400 bodies have been recovered after floods and landslides hit two villages in eastern DRC last week.
Authorities had previously said 200 people had died after torrential rain on Thursday.
In several villages near the shore of Lake Kivu, people have been digging through the mud with their hands in a desperate search for missing relatives.
The Congolese Red Cross volunteers do not have body bags.
You must pile up the bodies wrapped in blankets in the villages of Bushushu and Nyamukubi in South Kivu province.
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Communities have tried to find bodies among the mud and rubble
The floods are now four days and the death toll continues to rise to at least 394. A national day of mourning will be held on Monday.
A distraught mother in Nyamukubi said her husband survived and is in the hospital, but all her children are gone.
“It’s like the end of the world,” Gentille Ndagijimana, 27, who also lost her parents and two sisters, told AFP.
Houses made of wooden planks with corrugated iron roofs were swept away.
In Bushushu Village, some of the buildings that are still standing are half buried in the mud.
Some areas have been almost completely wiped out, according to a spokesman for the medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
The villages “are facing a humanitarian crisis,” he said.
“The eastern part of Congo is already an area facing multiple crises,” Mr Barbero added, as thousands of people have fled the conflict in North Kivu, meaning aid is already limited.
UN chief António Guterres said the floods were another example of accelerating climate change.