Scores killed, villages wiped out after earthen dam bursts in Kenya

NAIROBI, Kenya — A dam burst in western Kenya, destroying villages and killing at least 44 people, officials said Thursday, after weeks of heavy rains that had brought flooding and other damage across the region.

“The water has caused huge destruction of both life & property,” Lee Kinyanjui, governor of Nakuru County, where the disaster occurred, wrote on Twitter. “The extent of the damage is yet to be ascertained.”

He visited two villages “that were swept away,” he wrote later. Authorities were doing their best to evacuate families and to provide victims with medical attention, he added.

Forty people were reported missing and about 500 families were displaced, government and aid officials said. Four people were hospitalized and another 42 were treated for injuries, Fred Matiang’i, Kenya’s secretary for the interior, said at a news conference Thursday.

The casualty figures rose repeatedly Thursday as search and rescue missions continued, and officials cautioned that it could be some time before they knew the full toll.

The flooding struck about 9 p.m. Wednesday in and around Solai, a cluster of villages about 110 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi. The Red Cross said the two villages hit hardest were called Energy and Nyakinyua.

The failed structure was a privately owned earthen dam on a large farm, according to local officials.