Photo: Leadership

Adamawa floods

Yola — At least 20 corpses swept away by flood have been recovered from River Benue in Adamawa state, Red Cross officials have said.

The Red Cross secretary in the state Abubakar Ahmad told Daily Trust on Sunday that, "Corpses of 20 persons swept away by flood, which followed heavy rains and unexpected release of water from Lagdo Dam in the Republic of Cameroon have been recovered from River Benue, though for now we cannot ascertain from where the corpses hail from, but we are suspecting from neigbouring Cameroon."

He said already, the dead bodies have been buried by volunteers saying the number of deaths will continue to rise from the deluge that spread to 11 local governments and many communities

when water was released from the Lagdo Dam on the Cameroun side of the River Benue.

"Many people are still missing or unaccounted while bodies are being recovered in trickles from the river," the Red Cross scribe said.

Already, officials of the Red Cross and Medicine Sants Frontiers (MSF) have been inundated with sad tales from victims, as death toll rises and new born babies continued arriving.

He lamented that the 23 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps designated were experiencing shortage of potable water, food, sleeping space, mats and many other things they needed to survive.

15 women had put to bed within one week at different camps, where over 97,500 displaced people are camped.

The state Commissioner for Health, Mrs. Lillian Stephen, feared an outbreak of epidemics like cholera in the affected flood areas. Mrs. Stephen explained that the flood submerged pit toilets, and exhumed buried bodies, stressing that fertilizers applied on crops had been mixed with streams or water well, which, she said, were the main sources of drinking water of some of the affected areas.