Villagers and rescuers search for bodies among debris after a flash floods in Parwan province, on August 26, 2020 (via cnn.com)
The Sudanese transitional government declared a three-month state of emergency as floodwaters continued to spill over the banks of the Nile River. The capital of Khartoum and its sister city Omdurman sit at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile, where flooding is considered the worst since records were first kept over a century ago. At least 106 people have died so far, with hundreds of thousands more left homeless. Dozens of nearby villages have been evacuated along the Nile, whereas thousands of residents of the capital metropolitan area are still waiting for government assistance while sleeping in flooded homes.
Record rainfall is expected to continue to swell the Blue Nile, which flows from headwaters in Ethiopia before merging with the White Nile in Sudan and continuing into Lower Egypt. The Nile has been a source of contention between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia in recent years, as Ethiopia is preparing to inaugurate the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which will provide the largest source of hydroelectric power on the African continent, but which also has the potential to severely restrict water flow downstream to Sudan and Egypt. The current flooding is unrelated to the dam project.
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Meanwhile, thirteen provinces of Afghanistan are continuing to recover from a series of floods in late August that killed at least 160 people and injured hundreds more. Flash flooding in Parwan Province was the deadliest, where 116 people were confirmed dead just north of the capital city of Kabul. Relief crews are still searching for dozens of people reported missing, many of whom are assumed to be dead under layers of mud and debris that slammed into communities on August 26th.
FAI’s sister ministry Global Catalytic Ministries (GCM) is working with the underground community of believers in Afghanistan, where Disciple Making Movements (DMM) have ushered in the second-fastest growing house church movement in the world. Several families with whom GCM works directly were left homeless by the flooding and traumatized by a subsequent explosion. They are requesting prayer from the FAI global family — for food, shelter and medicine. We also pray for for a measure of divine strength and faith to be granted to them by the Holy Spirit, and for the disasters in both Sudan and Afghanistan to open the doors for more gospel laborers to access more unreached people in those nations. As they grapple with the loss of all their earthly possessions, we pray for catastrophe to bring Afghans and Sudanese an eternal inheritance.
Maranatha.
