Civil defence chief Major General Awad Widatallah Hussein told reporters that the White Nile burst its banks near where it meets with the Blue Nile, washing away 97 houses and severely damaging 150 in southwestern Khartoum.

Khartoum's Abu Adam and Uzuzab neighbourhoods were also severly damaged, Hussein said, adding that food and emergency shelter had been provided to those affected.

He said heavy rains in Northern State have caused the collapse of 14 houses and the uprooting of hundreds of date-palms.

The civil defence chief said a number of villages in Gezira State, south of Khartoum, "were hard hit by the flooding of the Blue Nile, levelling an unspecified number of houses."

The Al-Sahafa daily quoted the nazir (leader) of the Beni Amir tribe in eastern Sudan, Hamid Mohamed Ali, as calling the situation "catastrophic" after the seasonal Bereka River, which flows from Eritrea, burst its banks.

In Tokar town the river "swept away houses and food stocks, leaving the citizens homeless and short of everything and living in catastrophic conditions," the nazir said.

He appealed to national and international NGOs to "despatch immediate assistance" to his people.

The most affected city was eastern Sudan's Sinja where the Blue Nile, flowing from its source in Ethiopia, was reported to have left more than 1,200 families homeless before the authorities, calling in hundreds of army troops, could check the rising waters.

The water level in the city is now reportedly going down with the authorities spraying insecticides to fight potential water-borne diseases.

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