Floods kill 32, destroy property in the east

Flash flooding has killed 32 people including six children in Ethiopia’s second largest city, police said on Sunday. A wall of water hit Dire Dawa in the east of the country causing an estimated US $1.2 million worth of damage and leaving a massive trail of destruction in its wake, police said. "We have recovered 32 bodies and still have 10 people missing," police sergeant Mohammed Yassim, told IRIN. "This is the first time we have ever had flooding here. It was a wall of water that was 20 metres high that came down the river," he said by telephone from the town some 500 km east of the capital, Addis Ababa. "It has caused enormous damage to houses and cars," he said. The flood hit the town at about 1800 GMT on Friday when most people sit along cafes and wander along the Ashewa River, which runs through the town of 100,000 people. Yassim said that although the waters had quickly receded, cars and lorries had been turned over and left in the riverbed. The river – whose name means sand - is usually dry and only has water in it once or twice a year. The flooding is due to unseasonal heavy rains that have fallen in the Ethiopian highlands and flowed into the lowland areas. Dire Dawa is 3,000 feet above sea level. Rescuers were still looking for bodies, an eyewitness Ismail Abdul Melik said from the town. Many of the victims, he added, had homes on the riverbank. "Relatives of people who were killed are at the hospital trying to identify bodies," said Melik, an insurance salesman. The flooding occurred just weeks after Somali Region in eastern Ethiopia was hit by torrential rains and the country’s largest river, the Wabe Shebelle, burst its banks. More than 150 people were killed and thousands left homeless.