By IANS
La Paz : Heavy rains and floods have killed 73 people since last November in Bolivia, while more than 95,000 families have been rendered homeless, a government official has said.
According to the latest report from Civil Defence, the greatest number of deaths occurred in the southern province of Chuquisaca, EFE news agency reported Saturday.
Of the more than 95,000 families driven from their homes, some 20,000 are in the province of Beni, whose capital, Trinidad, was almost submerged several weeks ago.
The hardest hit region in the past few days was the eastern province of Santa Cruz, where at least five children died in mudslides that destroyed several homes in the town of El Torno.
According to Civil Defence, 150 soldiers have been sent to that municipality to help evacuate the homeless families.
Bolivia has received since November humanitarian and economic aid to help the affected families from organizations such as the UN and the World Bank, as well as from Germany, Spain, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, Chile, the US and other countries.
Met officials said that the impact of the weather phenomenon La Niña that caused the floods has begun to decline and is expected to disappear in April.
Nonetheless, they predicted that there were “probabilities” that the El Niño phenomenon would return to Bolivia next year with the same force as in 2007, when it caused 56 deaths and rendered 600,000 people homeless.