Heavy flooding hit the capital of the archipelago state of Cape Verde on Saturday morning, killing a six-month old baby and causing extensive damage, officials said.
Renaldo Rodrigues, the president of the West African country’s National Civil Protection Service, said that a flash flood in the capital Praia had caught a mother-of-two unawares.
“The baby was swept away and died immediately,” he said.
Exceptional rainfall has wreaked destruction across Africa in recent weeks, killing at least 200 people and affecting hundreds of thousands more, according to the UN.
Torrential downpours in Praia and Santiago island, upon which the capital is located, has caused flooding that damaged bridges, vehicles and farmland.
Cape Verde’s Interior Minister Paulo Rocha said the government had held an emergency meeting Saturday to assess the damage.
Further heavy rains are expected over the next two days, according to Cape Verde’s National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics.
