Flash floods following torrential rain south of Algiers have killed at least 29 people, injured 48 and left one person missing, the interior ministry said Thursday, warning of higher casualties.
Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni described them as the worst floods in a century.
"Based on the overflight that we made, the toll unfortunately could be greater," Zerhouni told reporters, after meeting local authorities in the sodden Ghardaia region.
Rain has been falling since Monday in the region, which lies about 500 kilometers (300 miles) south of Algiers.
The government previously said 13 people had been killed in the floods, which have damaged at least 600 homes, many of them in oasis areas.
A local resident reached by telephone by AFP suggested the toll could indeed be higher in the central Algerian region following the first rainfall in four years.
"The population even talks of about a hundred victims and up to one thousand houses flooded," he said.
The rainfall, which had started Monday continued into Tuesday but "not very hard," he said. "Wednesday it was a deluge," he added.
The wadis, or seasonal rivers, had filled up and spilled into the larger M'zab wadi river, which then flooded, sweeping away everything in its path.
The flooding has cut off roads and rendered telephone connections erratic.
"The bakeries are shut, there is neither gas nor electricity, the shops are flooded and their stocks are probably unusable," Zerhouni said, adding the government's priority was to aid the affected population.
Ministers were to meet Thursday to assess the damage and the population's needs, the minister said.
Several areas in Algeria were lashed by heavy rain over two days including Djelfa -- midway between Ghardaia and Algiers -- where two people died.
Algeria is no stranger to bad weather, particularly in the north. Flooding in the Algiers region in 2001 killed more than 800 people and caused considerable damage.
PHOTO CAPTION
A rainy day in Astawali, a western suburb of Algiers City, in 2007.
Algeria