"We are launching an appeal to assist 300,000 beneficiaries for three months. The appeal is based on the current situation in which many districts, especially the coastal regions has been badly hit," Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS) secretary general Abbas Gulled told a press conference.

Gulled said the appeal figure, which was earlier estimated to be 150,000,000 shillings (2.1 million dollars, 1.6 million euros), had to be revised because "there were areas where infrastructure was there, but now we have no access at all."

The society's disaster response chief Abdi Ahmed said the funds would be used for emergency response and rehabilitation of ruined infrastructure.

The society said the floods had directly affected at least 80,000 people across the country, but the overall figure could be much higher that the estimated 300,000.

At the weekend, at least six people, including a schoolgirl, were swept away and drowned by raging waters around the Indian Ocean port of Mombasa and the northeastern town of Garissa, bringing the death toll to 23 since the rains started in October.

In the coastal region, where roads, bridges and farmlands were swept away, military helicopters continued to ferry relief supplies to tens of thousands of displaced people.

"Flooding is also expected to occur in the traditional flood-prone areas of western Kenya, with rivers threatening to break their banks," KRCS said in a statement.

"The floods pose a threat of an outbreak of cholera, malaria, typhoid and other waterborne diseases, while thousands of people need urgent food, shelter, medicine and other essential assistance," it said.

Officials said flood water continued to wreck havoc at UN camps for Somali refugees in northeast Kenya, where at least two people, a pregnant woman and a young child, have died and at least 13,000 people were left homeless.

The floods are not limited to Kenya, where thousands of environmentalists and government delegates attending the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the capital mulled ways of addressing climate change that many blame for altering weather patterns and causing deadly drought-flood cycles.

The onset of rains has compounded problems across the Horn of Africa already brought by a recent killer drought, since parched soil inundating the worst-affected areas is unable to absorb the water, officials said.

In Somalia, floods have killed at least 42 and displaced 50,000 people over the past two weeks, compounding the misery affecting millions in the lawless Horn of Africa nation.

The UN Office for Co-ordinator for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) warned that the floods could affect up to a million people in the lawless African nation over the coming weeks.

"The flooding is particularly worrying, given security constraints and other obstacles to access (including flooding itself) that have recently reduced the operational space for humanitarian actors," OCHA representive for Somalia Eric Laroche warned in a statement.

Somalia, home to about 10 million people, lost the ability to respond to disasters after the government of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre was toppled in 1991.

In addition to the current fears of an all-out war between the powerful Islamic militia and the feeble government, decades of famine, droughts and floods have weakened the ability of the Somalis to cope with such calamities.

In Ethiopia, flooding from late October rains that burst the banks of several rivers has killed at least 68 people and affected some 280,000 people, according to officials there.

Related Links
Kenya Red Cross Society
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