CAIRO: Egypt on Friday blamed Ethiopia for the rising Nile River waters and flooding this week in two of its northernmost provinces, claiming the unusually high water levels are due to the east African country’s mismanagement of its new controversial dam on the river.
The floods in Beheira and Menoufia provinces in the Nile Delta in Egypt have submerged farmland and flooded village homes, many built illegally on silt deposits and sediments along the canals crisscrossing the delta.
Videos posted online Friday show residents in Menoufia wading through waist-deep water and partially submerged homes. In Ashmoun, farmers and residents were urged to urgently leave their lands and homes.
The extend of the damage by the floods in Egypt was not immediately known and officials in Menoufia could not be reached for comment and information about the damage.
Earlier this week, flooding along the Nile in war-stricken Sudan, which borders both Egypt and Ethiopia, prompted scores of villagers there to evacuate their homes. The UN migration agency, the International Organization for Migration, said on Thursday that about 100 households in Khartoum were also flooded.
Egypt now says that it was forced to discharge waters from its High Aswan Dam on the Nile in the country’s south, because it could not hold back rising water levels coming in from Ethiopia, more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) away.
Ethiopia earlier this month inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, Africa’s largest dam, to boost its economy. The nearly $5 billion dam, located on the Blue Nile — one of the two main tributaries of the Nile — near Ethiopia’s border with Sudan, is expected to double Ethiopia’s electricity generation capacity, according to officials.
But Egypt and Sudan say the dam in Ethiopia was in violation of an agreement — dating back to the colonial times — on how they should share Nile water resources.
On Friday, Egypt’s Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation said in a statement that it was “closely monitoring developments” linked to what it says is “reckless unilateral actions by Ethiopia in managing its illegal dam, which violates international law.”
Ethiopia’s actions pose a “direct threat to the lives and security of the peoples of downstream countries,” the statement said.
Ethiopia says it is not responsible for the floodings downstream and that its new dam on the Blue Nile has actually helped in “reducing the catastrophic effect” the floods could otherwise cause in neighboring Sudan.