Rain-soaked southern Africa hit by worst floods in years

Terra Daily via Agence France-Presse: Southern African countries have been hit by the worst floods in years, killing more than 100 people and displacing thousands, as a tropical storm threatened to bring more pain on Saturday.

As Mozambique braced for the arrival of a strengthening tropical storm Izilda, record river levels across the region threatened to exacerbate floods which have already affected hundreds of thousands of people.

Namibia's government declared a state of emergency last week in areas where floods have affected over 350,000 people, 13,000 of whom were displaced, according to numbers released by the United Nations on Friday.

Another 160,000 people have been affected in Angola.

The Zambezi river, along Namibia's northeastern Caprivi Region, rose to 7.82 metres (25 feet) this week, its highest level in 40 years, before slightly dropping, Caprivi Governor Leonard Mwilima said. "We have large areas submerged by water and access to several villages is cut off," he said.

…Some are blaming climate change for the floods. "We must seriously consider the present floods and those of a year ago as having to do with climate change," Guido van Langenhove, a Namibian government hydrologist, told AFP.

Locator map of Southern Africa by Xiong, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.5, Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 and Attribution ShareAlike 1.0 License