One person has been killed and almost 300 houses destroyed due to the severe weather that has affected Timor-Leste in the past week.
Anacleto Caetano, director of the External Relations Office of the Civil Protection Authority, told Portugal’s Lusa news agency that said that the fatality was a student swept away by flood waters in Lautem, a municipality at the eastern end of the country, which has borne the brunt of the bad weather.
Floods and landslides have damaged homes, roads and bridges in nine of Timor-Leste’s 13 municipalities, with hundreds of families having relocated to temporary shelters.
[See more: Rice harvests have more than doubled in Timor-Leste]
The bad weather has also hampered the work of civil aid teams, who are struggling to distribute food and water to areas cut off by damaged roads.
In Same, south of Dili, the Avatu Kotu bridge collapsed after being hit by raging waters, cutting off the city’s road link to the capital.
The Rai-Ketan bridge between Suai and Zumalai, to the southwest of Dili, has also partially collapsed, Lusa reports.
