BUJUMBURA, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- At least 12 persons died and over 30 others were injured at a neighborhood in Burundi's commercial capital Bujumbura by flooding caused by Saturday night's heavy rains, a senior Burundian official said on Sunday.
An unknown number of houses have been destroyed, Minister of Public Security and Disaster Management of Burundi Alain Guillaume Bunyoni told a press conference at the Winterekwa neighborhood where the incident occurred, adding that it is a provisional toll.
Heavy rains caused the flooding of a small river called Cari that deviated from its bed, invading houses of residents at Winterekwa, he said.
The river deviated from its bed because of debris and tree trunks that were brought by the river waters from uphill, he added.
"Security forces and the security ministry's partners including the Burundi Red Cross are doing all their best to restore the river into its bed in order to reduce damages," said the minister.
He urged people living near the affected area to temporarily leave, and return after the riverbed of Cari has been rehabilitated.
The government will prepare a site to host homeless people who are unable to find others to host them.
In eastern Africa, at least 280 people have been killed and more than 2.8 million others affected by unusually heavy rainfall and flooding by early December this year, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
