Reuters
Natural disasters
are further eroding living conditions for many Angolans whose
lives have already been ruined by a decades-old civil war in the
south-west African country, media reported on Thursday.
Heavy rains
have caused flooding in the southern provinces of Benguela and
Namibe, destroying homes and strangling supply routes from the
coast, while a drought rages in the southern interior province
of Cunene.
Floods have
caused at least 20,000 people to lose their homes in floods in
the southern province of Namibe and 3,000 more in Benguela, the
head of the national welfare agency MINARS told the state newspaper
on Thursday.
"The
people are totally without clothes, without blankets, without
means for surviving," Albino Mulongo told Jornal de Angola.
He appealed for international aid.
Mulongo said
drought was also affecting families in Cunene.
The overflowing
Bero River submerged two suburbs of Namibe town, the provincial
capital, but water levels had started to recede by Wednesday.
The provincial
government would give affected Namibe residents new land to build
houses, church-run radio reported on Thursday.
Residents
were wading across swollen rivers to trek 10 km (six miles) to
buy petrol and cooking gas from the state oil company Sonangol,
Radio Ecclesia said.
"Washed
out bridges in Namibe will mean fuel scarcity in our province,"
Francisco Ramos da Cruz, the governor of neighbouring Huila, told
Jornal de Angola on Thursday. He said fuel trucks were already
risking unsafe roads and bridges.
Angola has
been torn by a 26-year civil war between Luanda and the rebel
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The conflict
has killed about a million people and decimated the country's
infrastructure.
Government
and aid agency figures for the total number of people displaced
by the war range from 2.5 million to 3.8 million. The government
said 63,000 newly displaced people were registered between January
and March.
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