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Algeria: Floods kill 29 in Algeria’s oasis town of Ghardaia Fri. October 03, 2008 02:06 am.- By Bonny Apunyu. -
(SomaliNet) The government of Algeria said on Thursday that floods have killed at least 29 people in the North African nation’s oasis town of Ghardaia in the Sahara.
According to the official APS state news agency, some 48 people had been injured and one person had gone missing since heavy rains began on Tuesday around the town on the northern edge of the Sahara desert, an interior ministry statement added.
Earlier Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni issued a preliminary toll of 13 dead and said that between 300 and 600 homes had been inundated in the town of about 100,000 people 700 km (437 miles) south of the capital Algiers.
Zerhouni said gas and electricity had been cut and food supplies had been flooded and probably rendered useless.
Ghardaia is one of several fortified Mozabite Berber medieval settlements in the M'Zab valley, a region listed as a U.N.
World Heritage Site and frequented by European tourists.-Reuters
News Category: Africa
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