13 dead, thousands affected by floods in Guinea, Niger

At least 13 people have been killed and thousands affected by recent floods triggered by heavy rains in Guinea and Niger, authorities said Wednesday.

In Guinea, seven people were killed and 4,000 affected by floods in the past two weeks, according to the National Agency for Emergency Management and Humanitarian Disasters.

Lancei Toure, the director general of the agency, told reporters that the government has embarked on evicting residents from high-risk areas "to limit the impact of the heavy rains."

In Kakimbo district, for example, many people's properties including vehicles were washed away by floods when the Kakimbo River overflowed, according to the agency.

An emergency meeting chaired by Guinea's Prime Minister Amadou Oury Bah was convened Tuesday in the capital Conakry to deploy a rapid and robust response team.

Meanwhile, in Niger, six people were killed and 3,031 affected by floods, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its weekly disaster updates.

The most hit regions are south-central Zinder, where 1,943 people were affected, south-central Maradi, and the center of Tahoua.

In addition, the floods injured 17 Nigeriens and destroyed 320 houses.

With the number of people affected steadily increasing, Nigerien authorities expressed concern about the limited response so far and appealed to OCHA to ensure that humanitarian partners have pre-positioned response capacities on the ground, the UN agency said.

On Monday, OCHA in its flooding outlook indicated that Guinea, Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Cameroon would receive heavy rainfall this week.