Buzzoca

At least 52 passengers in two public transport vehicles drowned in western Niger, which has seen heavy rains and flooding since June, state media reported.

he Nigerian Press Agency (ANP) reported on Wednesday that the accident occurred in the desert region of Tahoua, 70 kilometers from the town of the same name, on the road linking it to the department of Tillia.

 

‘Two vehicles carrying many passengers to the market in the town of Tlemcess got stuck in a watercourse before being surprised by a strong current that carried them away,’ a local source told the France-Presse news agency.

‘The search continues (…) the police and the National Guard are working hard,’ said the ANP, specifying that the victims were traders from Niger and neighboring Nigeria.

The agency admitted that ‘the provisional figure indicates 52 dead and several missing’ in the accident in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

On Saturday, the Minister for Humanitarian Action and Disaster Management, Aïssa Lawan Wandarma, said that at least 94 people had died, 93 had been injured and more than 137,000 had been affected by the floods since June.

All eight regions of the country have been hit, particularly Maradi (centre-south), Zinder (centre-east) and Tahoua (west).

According to the minister, more than 15,000 houses and around 40 classrooms have been destroyed and ‘15,472 head of cattle’ decimated, in a country where cattle breeding is one of the pillars of the economy.

The Minister of Transport, Colonel Salissou Mahaman Salissou, said on Saturday that roads and bridges had been washed away, including in the desert area of Agadez in the north of the country.

A report by the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), released on 15 July, predicted that more than 247,000 people could be affected before the end of the rainy season in September.

According to OCHA, this phenomenon has been ‘exacerbated by climate change’ in this desert country in the Sahel.

The meteorological service predicts heavy rains for August, the ‘wettest month’ in Niger, where the rainy season, which runs from June to September, regularly claims lives.

In 2022, 195 people died and more than 400,000 were affected.