A landslide has swept over a fishing village on the banks of a lake in the northeast Democratic Republic of Congo, killing 40 people, a regional official said Thursday.

Part of a mountain engulfed "a fisherman's camp after heavy rains caused a landslide" the deputy governor of Ituri province, Pacifique Keta, told AFP.

He said 40 people were killed in the disaster in the village of Tora on the banks of Lake Albert on Wednesday.

It follows devastating floods in the Sierra Leone capital of Freetown on Monday that killed some 300 people.

"Yesterday (Wednesday), we buried 28 bodies and today we will bury 12 more," said Keta.

A doctor at the nearby Tshomia hospital, Herve Isamba, said they were treating four people injured in the landslide.

Keta said that two people were also killed Wednesday when an illegal mine flooded in the nearby Walendu Piti area.

The vast country has experienced a number of previous such disasters.

In May 2010, a mudslide that swept over the eastern village of Kibiriga killed 19 people: the bodies of 27 others were never recovered.

In February 2002, about 50 people were found dead after a wave of mud and rocks hit the eastern town of Uvira, submerging about 150 homes.

Fishing on Lake Albert is one of the main occupations in Ituri, which borders Uganda.

The province, rich in gold deposits, saw several outbreaks of violence during the Second Congo War between 1998 and 2003.

That ended with the aid of a French-led international military intervention.

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312 dead as mudslides, flooding sweep through Sierra Leone capital
Freetown (AFP) Aug 14, 2017
At least 312 people were killed and more than 2,000 left homeless on Monday when heavy flooding hit Sierra Leone's capital of Freetown, leaving excavators to pull bodies from rubble and overwhelming the city's morgues. An AFP journalist saw several homes submerged in Regent village, a hilltop community, and corpses floating in the water in the Lumley West area of the city, as the government ... read more

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