Chad’s President Mahamat Idriss Deby has declared a state of emergency over flooding that is affecting more than a million people in the country.
Floods are not uncommon during Chad’s rainy season, which usually runs from May to October in its southern regions. But this year, the rains came early and were the heaviest in decades.
Chad has two main rivers, the Chari and Logone, which flow through its southern provinces and empty into Lake Chad, at the border area with Niger, Nigeria and Cameroon.
This year the lake was fed early on by other tributaries and its water level became higher than that of the two rivers, causing them to flow instead into surrounding towns and villages, said Hamid Abakar Souleymane, a hydrologist at Chad’s National Meteorological Agency.
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Article URL : https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/20/chad-declares-state-of-emergency-as-floods-affect