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NIAMEY: At least 38 people have been killed and more than 92,000 left homeless since June in disastrous floods in Niger, the United Nations have said.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said the deaths, up from a previous government toll of 14, followed torrential rains in August.

More than 26,000 livestock have been lost and more than 9,000 homes destroyed, the UN said, citing government figures.

Authorities and NGOs have already given out aid to more than 50,000 people, the UN added, with many of the homeless sheltering in schools and public buildings.

Despite being in the middle of the desert, Agadez in the north and Tahoua to the west are among the worst hit regions, along with Maradi in the south.

Niger is in the midst of its annual rainy season, having struggled to overcome a severe food crisis caused by drought.

One of the poorest countries on the planet, its

authorities are also struggling with 300,000 refugees and internally displaced people who have fled the Boko Haram insurgency in Niger's southeast and in neighbouring Nigeria. </s> Nearly 200 people have died in flooding caused by heavy seasonal rains across 12 states in Nigeria, the country’s main relief agency said on Thursday.

The National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) said 199 people had lost their lives after the main Niger and Benue rivers burst their banks.

A national disaster has been declared in the central states of Kogi, where the two rivers meet, and Niger, plus Delta and Anambra in the south.

NEMA said in its latest update that “large-scale flooding” since late last month “impacted 826,403 people”. Of those, 286,119 had been made homeless.

Numbers were expected to rise and more rain is expected in the coming weeks, it added.

Shelter, food, medicine and other items such as mosquito nets were “priority needs”, the report said.

The flooding has not only devastated towns and villages along the rivers but also destroyed crops and killed livestock, said the secretary-general of the Nigerian Red Cross, Abubakar Kende.

But he warned: “One of our biggest concerns following extensive floods like this is the threat of cholera and other diseases.”

Lack of sanitation, healthcare and clean water “could have deadly consequences” and add to the nearly 28,000 suspected cases of cholera reported across Nigeria since January, he said.

The United Nations last weekend said there had been more than 3,000 recorded cases of cholera and 97 deaths in the northeast Nigerian states of Borno and Yobe in the past two weeks alone.

In the wider Lake Chad region comprising Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon, more than 500 people have died from the water-borne disease since the start of the year.

Northeast Nigeria has also been the epicentre of Boko Haram’s Islamist insurgency, which has left more than 27,000 people dead since 2009.

Some 1.8 million are still homeless, with many of them living in makeshift camps as a result of the conflict.
Flooding in Niger kills at least 38 people and leaves more than 92,000 people displaced.