NAIROBI: The death toll from a deadly landslide in western Kenya has risen to 26 after four more bodies were retrieved on Sunday, shortly before rescue efforts to find survivors were suspended due to a flash flood.
Interior Minister Kipchumba Murkomen said 25 people are still missing and that the government had intensified the search mission, with the military deploying four aircrafts to help teams access the area that has been completely cut off after roads were washed away during Saturday’s landslide.
On Sunday, search teams had to abandon the site after flash floods from a hill in the Chesongoch area in Kenya’s Rift Valley region.
Heavy rains continue across Kenya, and floods have been reported in several counties, displacing thousands of people.
The government has urged those living in flood or landslide prone areas to move, as the rains are expected to continue across the country.
Murkomen said the government would continue airlifting supplies to those affected, including to 15 schools that have been cut off, and that ongoing national examination papers would be airlifted to candidates.
He said the government would cover the medical bills of more than 30 injured people and resettle dozens of others whose homes were swept away.
“It is very sad that families have lost five to six immediate family members,” the minister told journalists on Sunday.
Oscar Okum, regional manager for the Kenya Red Cross, said the Rift Valley area was still susceptible to land slides.
“Today, while we were doing search and recovery and rescue, we have had roads that are already opened being populated again by mudslides. So it’s still an active incidence and we urge the community members to move to safer grounds for purposes of their safety, lives and livelihoods as well,” he said.
Kenyan landslide death toll rises to 26 as flash floods hamper search for survivors
https://arab.news/g24uk
Kenyan landslide death toll rises to 26 as flash floods hamper search for survivors
- Heavy rains continue across Kenya, and floods have been reported in several counties
- The government has urged those living in flood or landslide prone areas to move
Russia says captured Ukraine’s Siversk in key eastern region
- The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said
- He said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents
MOSCOW: Russia said Thursday its troops had seized full control of Siversk, a Ukrainian city in the eastern Donetsk region where fighting has intensified in recent weeks, though Ukraine denied the key settlement had been lost.
The Russian army has been slowly but steadily grinding through eastern Ukraine and taking ground from outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian forces, with some of the fiercest battles taking place in Donetsk.
Russia’s military chief of staff, Valery Gerasimov, said Moscow’s forces had captured Siversk in a report to President Vladimir Putin during a televised meeting with army commanders.
The Russian army in Ukraine is “confidently advancing along the entire front,” Putin said, thanking the commanders and soldiers “for their combat work.”
Putin said last month his troops were advancing on Siversk, home to around 11,000 residents before the war, claiming that the Russian offensive was “practically impossible to hold back.”
The Ukrainian army’s eastern command denied Russian claims it had taken Siversk, saying that it “remains under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
“The enemy is trying to infiltrate Siversk in small groups, taking advantage of unfavorable weather conditions but most of these units are being destroyed on the approaches,” it added in a Facebook post.
Siversk is located about 30 kilometers (18 miles) east of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last two major cities still under Ukrainian control in the Donbas — an industrial and mining region in Moscow’s sights.
Moscow earlier this month said it had captured Pokrovsk, a former road and rail hub also in Donetsk, but Kyiv claims fighting in the city is still ongoing.
Putin has said that Moscow is ready to fight on to seize the rest of the land it claims in eastern Ukraine if Kyiv does not give it up as part of a peace deal.
Eastern Ukraine has been ravaged since Russia launched its assault in February 2022, with tens of thousands of people killed and millions forced to flee their homes.
