Widespread flooding has killed at least 59 people in Ivory Coast since the “particularly heavy” rainy season began in mid-May, a government spokesperson said Wednesday.
Each year, the rainy season from late May to late July brings landslides and flooding that kill dozens, especially in poorer neighbourhoods, in the country of 30 million people.
A “particularly high toll of 59 people who have died this year, even though we are only at the beginning of the rainy season,” spokesman Amadou Coulibaly told a cabinet meeting on Wednesday.
Flooding is a recurring problem in Abidjan, the economic capital and home to more than six million people.
Rapid urban growth has led to widespread informal housing in flood-prone areas.
Abidjan saw more than 10 people killed in just two days, the government reported on Monday.
For several years, the government has been carrying out sometimes harsh eviction and demolition operations, saying it is targeting precarious neighbourhoods in flood-prone zones.
Coulibaly said that there had been no deaths yet recorded in at-risk areas “where residents have complied with the government’s safety instructions and agreed to relocate”.
But some 20 people were killed in Abidjan’s Attecoube neighbourhood, where some victims had returned to sites previously cleared by authorities, he noted.
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