ALGIERS, October 3, 2008 (AFP) — Around 5,000 people demonstrated in the flood-riven southern Algerian town of Ghardaia on Friday to demand urgent aid after flash floods killed 31 residents, witnesses said.
Police broke up the rally before the crowd could reach the municipal headquarters, witnesses told AFP. The protesters demanded basic food supplies and equipment to help search for survivors or bodies buried in the rubble.
The death toll in Ghardaia climbed to 31 Friday, as aid workers battled to help hundreds of homeless and the army was deployed to prevent looting, state radio said.
Fifty people were injured and about 1,000 were homeless around the historic town, a UN World Heritage site at the entrance to the Algerian desert in the M'Zab Valley, state radio said.
Hundreds of volunteers, Red Crescent workers and Muslim scouts were helping the homeless. The radio said the water level was eight metres (26 feet) high in some parts of the town, some 600 kilometres (373 miles) south of the capital Algiers.
Basic aid and food was arriving from nearby towns in trucks, the radio said.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni said the floods are the worst for a century, while locals on Friday reported sweeping damage.
"Hundreds of houses have been destroyed but thousands have been damaged and are uninhabitable in the area," said a resident of El-Gaba, a village near Ghardaia, speaking in front of his ravaged home.
"It's unimaginable, a real catastrophe," added another, confirming that four people had died in the vicinity and three others were missing.
Another shocked resident said all the homes damaged by the waters would effectively have to be rebuilt.
Gas and electricity supplies have been partially revived, but there was an acute shortage of basic goods and medicines - most of which had been damaged due to the flooding.
The interior ministry sent tents, generators and 400 tonnes of first aid to the region. But residents of Ghardaia, who took to the streets Friday, said they needed emergency supplies more quickly.
The government previously said 13 people had been killed in the floods.
A resident reached by telephone told AFP the toll could be higher in the region following the first rainfall in four years.
"The population even talks of about 100 victims and up to 1,000 houses flooded," he said, adding that the rainfall, which started Monday, had become "a deluge" by Wednesday.
He said seasonal rivers had filled up and spilled into a larger one, which then flooded, sweeping away everything in its path.
Several parts of Algeria were lashed by heavy rain including Djelfa - midway between Ghardaia and Algiers - where two people died.
Flooding in the Algiers region in 2001 killed more than 800 people and caused considerable damage.