SEOUL: UNICEF said Tuesday that the recent deadly flooding in North Korea had washed entire communities away, leaving tens of thousands of people homeless with disease and malnutrition on the rise.
At least 138 people have died and hundreds more are missing after torrential rains caused devastation in the country’s far north, with rescue teams only now making it to more remote, hard-hit areas.
Photographs of the area showed barren expanses of mud dotted with the wreckage of homes, as local residents — wrapped up against the coming winter — struggled to salvage what they could to rebuild.
Disease and malnutrition are rising, UNICEF said, with health clinics reporting that twice as many children were seeking help compared to before the disaster.
Respiratory infections, diarrhea and indigestion are also increasingly common, they added.
Aid workers were distributing peanut paste, which is used to treat severe acute malnutrition, to local children, warning that “numbers are expected to rise dramatically without support”.
