HARARE, Zimbabwe — Five children were killed after a dam collapsed in eastern Zimbabwe, and rescuers were searching for two others who were reported missing, the country’s disaster management agency said Thursday.
An influx of water following continuous rains in recent weeks breached the walls of the dam at a farm in Chipinge, a remote district in the east of the country, on Sunday. Authorities initially said a four-year-old girl doing laundry with her mother and a 30-year-old man died. The girl’s mother survived.
However, with some children unaccounted for in the area, a frantic search and rescue mission kicked off and resulted in the recovery of four more bodies of children this week.
The southern African nation’s disaster management agency, the Civil Protection Unit, said the search is continuing for two more children, ages eight and four, who are still missing.
The agency said gushes of water flooded downstream villages, catching the children who were fishing or doing laundry on a nearby river by surprise and also destroying agricultural equipment and killing livestock.
A team from the Civil Protection Unit, the police and community members were combing the area to locate the missing children.
Zimbabwe, fresh from the most severe drought in four decades, has seen incessant rains in many parts of the country in recent weeks.
