Somalia flood waters still rising

This boy had to be rescued after climbing onto the roof Enlarge Image

Flood waters are still rising in southern Somalia, an aid worker in the area has told the BBC.

"Our hospital is surrounded by water," said Julie Neubuhr from medical aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres.

She said aid workers were already treating cases of cholera and she feared a major outbreak of disease.

Aid agencies have launched an appeal to help some 1.8 million people affected by the floods in parts of Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia.

The aid effort in Somalia is especially difficult because of the lack of infrastructure following 15 years of conflict and the absence of a central government.

Refugee camps flooded

Ms Neubuhr told the BBC's World Today programme that people were still arriving by boat as some villages were completely cut off.

She was speaking from a clinic in Marere, near the Juba river, about 80km north of the port of Kismayo.

In pictures: Kenyan floods

She said the waters had been rising for the past two weeks and aid workers were now setting up a camp on higher ground.

The Shabelle and Juba rivers have both flooded their banks, affecting towns and villages in a swathe of territory stretching hundreds of kilometres.

In eastern Kenya, the UN refugee agency has started to move thousands of Somali refugees, whose camps near Dadaab have been flooded.

The BBC's Bashkas Jugsodaay says some 35,000 new arrivals have agreed to move but a larger group, which has been there for 15 years, refuse to move to higher ground near Hagdera.

Some of them have built solid houses which they do not want to abandon. They instead want the UNHCR to build a dam to protect their camps.

Parts of the nearby town of Garissa are also underwater, with houses near the River Tana submerged.

The floods have knocked out bridges and made roads impassable, meaning aid drops are the only way to deliver food.

One Somali refugee in Kenya told the BBC he and others were living in trees and were attacked by wild animals.

The floods in the Horn of Africa follow last year's droughts in the region.

That left the earth unable to absorb the heavy rains, leading to flash floods in Ethiopia, as well as Somalia and Kenya.

The UN has said the floods could be the worst in the region for 50 years.

The rains are expected to continue for another month.