10 IVORIANS ARE KILLED BY HEAVY RAINS.

Tunji Wusu –

Ivory Coast officials told AFP that the torrential downpours and landslides that have devastated Abidjan had claimed at least 10 lives.

According to the military’s firefighting brigade GSPM, the tally was only a provisional toll as of Friday.

Anicet Bah, GSPM captain and deputy chief of operations, told AFP that “we recorded 10 deaths, nine in Yopougon and one in Cocody-Angre,” two areas of Abidjan, the largest metropolis and economic center of the nation.

Around 3 a.m. on Thursday, the first landslide in Yopougon’s industrial area occurred, resulting in four fatalities and one injury.

A second avalanche in the same location claimed the lives of four people, including a toddler, and injured seven others, he said.

Another body was rescued from the landslide at morning at Attecoube-Mossikro, not far from there.

“One person was swept away by the waters” in Cocody, a neighborhood closer to the city center, and the body was later discovered by locals.

The firefighters were informed that three other victims had been washed away, but Bah claimed the mission to locate them had been abandoned after a “vain” search.

Every year, the months of June and July bring Ivory Coast substantial rains, but unstable building has resulted in more flood-prone neighborhoods, notably in the less affluent portions of the expanding West African city, which is home to an estimated 5.6 million people.

A family of five—a spouse and their three children—died in a landslide in Yopougon in the middle of June.

Last year’s rainy season also brought sorrow to the populated district when six individuals were buried in a landslide following a wet night.

The government announced last month that 15 kids have perished in weather-related accidents since the year’s commencement.

AFP