Sudan floods death toll reaches 101, crops ruined

KHARTOUM, Aug 29 (Reuters) Floods across Sudan have killed 101 people, spread disease and destroyed livelihoods by wiping out agricultural crops, officials today said.

Yesterday, the United Nations appealed for 20 million dollars to provide clean water, food and shelter to more than 3 million people in what Sudanese officials have called the worst floods in living memory.

''One hundred and one have died, and 278 were injured in the floods,'' Awad Widatallah Hussein, an official in the government's emergency response team, told Reuters.

The flooding killed more than 36,000 livestock, he said.

The floods have made at least 200,000 people homeless, and destroyed more than 42,000 hectares of crops, the UN humanitarian aid agency (OCHA) said in a statement.

In south Sudan, which recently emerged from decades of civil war, witnesses said the situation was worsening.

Aid workers said mud huts had disintegrated in thigh-high waters and that farmers were particularly at risk in a region where most of the population depends on agriculture. Parts of the south are so remote they are inaccessible during floods.

In northern Sudan, a man was electrocuted and died after torrential rains brought down an electricity cable in his house last week, his neighbour said.

''For about 10 hours the water was everywhere. He touched the water and was electrocuted immediately,'' the man's neighbour Omar Sid Ahmed Al-Hasoon said, adding that the man had eight children.

OCHA said at least 3.5 million people in Sudan may be at risk of epidemics. It said the death toll from Acute Watery Diarrhoea (AWD), spread by the floods, has risen to 57 people.

Earlier this month the World Health Organisation said the outbreak, mostly in the eastern province of Gedaref, was cholera.

Cholera causes severe watery diarrhoea and can lead to death within hours if not treated.

A Gedaref Ministry of Health report obtained by Reuters said 70 per cent of samples had tested positive for cholera.

Yesterday, the government's Humanitarian Aid Commission denied there was any cholera. The WHO declined to comment.

Analysts say the word cholera has political and social ramifications so governments are reluctant to use the term.

Last year a cholera outbreak throughout Sudan killed 700 people and affected 25,000. It was the first time in many years the water-borne disease had been reported in Sudan.

REUTERS SY RAI2032