By Jack Kimball
Nairobi - A disastrous cycle of drought and flood has hit the Horn of Africa, bringing misery and death to some of the continent's poorest regions.
Areas that experienced painful drought for several months from late 2005 are now suffering deadly flooding caused by abnormally heavy seasonal rains.
Flash floods from overflowing rivers have killed almost 1,000 people and displaced about 120,000 in parts of Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia since early August.
Ethiopia on Friday asked aid for nearly 200 000 people affected by the flooding, described by one Ethiopian official as "a nightmare".
"The current devastating flood problem is the worst that has been observed in a generation," said Simon Mechale, the head of Ethiopia's disaster agency.
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Cyclical rains have been exacerbated by winds coming from the Indian and Atlantic Oceans and weather systems off the northwest coast of Africa, experts say.
"Depending on the surface temperatures over these oceans, the winds that blow from those areas can be extremely moisture-laden," Peter Ambenje, assistant director for forecasting at Kenya's meteorological department, told Reuters.
"If the winds are moisture-laden, then we get a lot of rainfall."
Rains drenching Ethiopia's highlands have made rivers overflow, causing flooding in the south and east of the country as well as in Sudan, aid agencies said.
"It's the rainfall on the Ethiopian highlands that is the principal cause of this flooding," said Steve Penny, co-ordinator for flood relief for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
"It's a very, very worrying situation."
Aid agencies say more rivers are likely to overflow as heavy rains are expected to continue for another month.
Rising levels in Kenya's northern Lake Turkana have hampered its capacity to absorb excess rain waters flowing through Ethiopian rivers, aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said.
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