Families searched for their loved ones amid the rubble of destroyed houses and knee-deep mud from landslides in the capital of Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday (November 27). Authorities on Tuesday (November 26) said at least 39 people had been killed in Kinshasa following torrential rains that caused landslides near a university.
Houses in the Lemba district were buried in mud and one resident Papa Mabla said he was looking for the body of his 11-year-old son and he knew of at least 7 other people who had died in the area.
Another witness described how a pile of the city's rubbish had come crashing down with the mud and water during the rainfall and covered most of the houses.
The neighbourhoods of Kisenso, Lemba and Mont-Ngafula were the worst hit by the floods following heavy rains that began in the middle of the night on Tuesday (November 26). Two bridges collapsed and one road fell into a ravine in the Lemba commune.
Floods are not unusual in Kinshasa, a city of almost 12 million people with notoriously poor infrastructure and where many neighbourhoods are poorly planned, though they rarely cause so many deaths.
(Production: Benoit Nyemba, Yvonne Bell, Aiden Nulty)
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