Floods in Eastern DR Congo Kill More Than 100

People in Kinshasa’s Pompage district after the Congo River overflowed. (AFP/Getty Images file)
People in Kinshasa’s Pompage district after the Congo River overflowed. (AFP/Getty Images file)
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Floods in Eastern DR Congo Kill More Than 100

People in Kinshasa’s Pompage district after the Congo River overflowed. (AFP/Getty Images file)
People in Kinshasa’s Pompage district after the Congo River overflowed. (AFP/Getty Images file)

Raging floods rushing through a village during the night killed more than 100 people, many of them children as they slept, in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, local officials told AFP on Saturday.

The floods were sparked by torrential rains and ripped through the Kasaba village in the Sud Kivu province during the night of Thursday-Friday, Bernard Akili, a regional official, told AFP.

Torrential rains caused the Kasaba river to burst its banks overnight, with the rushing waters "carrying everything in their path, large stones, large trees and mud, before razing the houses on the edge of the lake," he said.

"The victims who died are mainly children and elderly," he said, adding that 28 people were injured and some 150 homes were destroyed.

Sammy Kalonji, the regional administrator, said the torrent killed at least 104 people and caused "enormous material damage."

Another local resident told AFP that some 119 bodies had been found by Saturday.

The village, which sits on the Tanganyika lake and is only accessible by the lake, does not have internet service, a local humanitarian worker told AFP.

Such natural disasters are frequent in the DRC, particularly on the shores of the great lakes in the east of the country, with the surrounding hills weakened by deforestation.

In 2023, floods killed 400 people in several communities located on the shores of Lake Kivu, in South Kivu province.



First International Airline Lands at Tehran Airport since Flight Suspension

Reuters file photo of an IranAir plane
Reuters file photo of an IranAir plane
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First International Airline Lands at Tehran Airport since Flight Suspension

Reuters file photo of an IranAir plane
Reuters file photo of an IranAir plane

FlyDubai became the first international carrier to land at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport on Friday at the end of a 20-day suspension of flights that was imposed due to Israeli attacks on Iran, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The arrival of Flight FZ1930 at Iran's biggest airport from the airline's base in the United Arab Emirates marked the start of a gradual return to normal operations in Iranian airspace, IRNA said.

FlyDubai is a low-cost carrier and a sister airline to Emirates.

Local authorities described the landing as a sign of restored stability and effective crisis management in the country's aviation sector, Reuters said. Passenger services were carried out under full safety and security protocols, IRNA reported.

International and domestic air traffic had been halted following Israeli airstrikes and heightened security concerns across Iranian skies.

Iran's airports have reopened for domestic and international flights, except for those in the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, and the country's airspace is also open for international transit flights, state media reported.