new toll puts more than 340 dead in floods that hit the country

South African relief continued Thursday, April 14, to remove bodies from the rubble using helicopters. The death toll has been mounting in South Africa for four days, following the unprecedented floods that hit the region of the port city of Durban. In the evening of Thursday, the authorities count 341 dead and nearly 41,000 people affected by this disaster, announced the minister of the province, Sihle Zikalala, during a press conference, referring to a “unprecedented devastation of human lives and infrastructure”.

“The intense rescue phase is largely over. Currently, our work is mainly to recover bodies”Travis Trower, who leads rescue teams, told AFP. Originally from the region, he confessed to witnessing “the worst disaster in 20 years” in the province of Kwazulu-Natal (KZN, east).

Men and women drowned, children and babies died buried in landslides. More than 100 bodies were deposited overnight from Wednesday to Thursday at the Phoenix morgue, in the suburbs of the city of Durban.

The forecast announces thunderstorms and the risk of localized flooding for the Easter weekend. These new bad weather should also affect the neighboring provinces of the Free State (center) and the Eastern Cape (southeast).