Southern Ethiopia Floods Kill 125

Fresh flooding has killed 125 people in southern Ethiopia, a police official said Monday, a week after 256 people died in the east following torrential rains.

Zeleke Menebo, deputy police commissioner for the region, cited officials in the region for the death toll and said it could rise. The Omo River, which is some 472 miles long and empties into Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, burst its banks Sunday in the Omo Valley in Ethiopia's Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Regional State.

Rescuers were being airlifted into Ethiopia's remote Omo Valley by helicopter after a river burst its banks, flooding two villages and washing away food supplies and animals.

"The flood has claimed the lives of the residents ... as well having caused damage to property," said Sisay Tadesse, spokesman for the government's emergency arm, the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Agency. He had no official confirmation of the number of people killed.

Rescuers said they had no further details from the area, which is 700 kilometers 435 miles south of the capital Addis Ababa, because it is so remote, with few roads or telephones.

Meanwhile police said the death toll from floods that hit the town of Dire Dawa, 310 miles east of Addis Ababa on Aug. 6 had climbed to 256. Five people were also killed last Wednesday in northern Ethiopia after a river burst its banks due to heavy rains.

More than 15,000 people around the Horn of Africa nation have been left homeless because of flooding in the last eight days, according to government officials. Several hundred people are still missing, according to U.N agencies in the country.