At least 23 people were killed and many others displaced as a heavy flood swept through the southern Nigerian village of Loko earlier this week, local newspaper The Punch in Lagos reported Thursday.

The victims were reportedly drowned and washed away by the flood that submerged Loko in the Adamawa state in the early hours of Monday when the rain started.

The report said that some villagers had been evacuated to a nearby market and schools for temporary resettlement while others were taken as refugees with their relatives in the nearby villages.

Movements through the village to other parts of the state had been disturbed as the linking bridge was covered by the flood.

Ibrahim Abdul-Mumini, chairman of House Committee on Local Government and Chieftaincy Matters, who visited the scene to assess the extent of damage, urged the people to move to the temporary site for the flood to subside.

The chairman described the flood as a national disaster and appealed to the federal and state governments, international agencies for aid.

/Source: Xinhua