N’DJAMENA, Chad (AFP) — Severe flooding in Chad since July has claimed 503 lives and affected around 1.7 million since July, the United Nations (UN) said Saturday in its latest assessment of the disaster.

The floods have also destroyed 212,111 houses, flooded 357,832 hectares (885,000 acres) of fields and drowned 69,659 heads of cattle, said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Chad.

All of the country’s provinces had been hit, Chad’s Water and Energy Minister Marcelin Kanabe Passale told journalists Saturday morning, warning of more trouble to come.

“The waters of the Logone and Chari rivers have reached a critical height likely to cause obvious serious flooding in the coming days,” Passale said.

N’Djamena, Chad’s capital, is located where the Logone and Chari rivers flow into each other.

Passale recommended that all water from private wells be treated with chlorine before consumption.

A flood-monitoring committee had been set up to “assess the risks associated with the pollution of drinking water supplies and rising river levels”, he added.

The UN had already warned in early September of the impact of “torrential rains and severe flooding” in the wider region, particularly in Chad.

It called for immediate action and funding to tackle climate change.

With the rainy season at its height, Chad is just one of many countries in west and central Africa hit by flooding in recent weeks after torrential rains.

The rising waters have affected more than four million people across 14 different countries, the World Food Programme warned on September 17.

Near the Chad and Nigerian borders, northern Cameroon is experiencing 125 per cent more rainfall than normal for the season, according to a OCHA report published in mid-September.

The UN estimates that 20 people have died and more than 236,000 have been affected in Cameroon since the end of August.

In neighbouring Nigeria, massive floods that have hit the northeastern city of Maiduguri claimed at least 30 lives and forced 400,000 people from their homes, officials said.

Since the start of the rainy season in Africa’s most populous country, floods have killed 229 people and displaced more than 380,000 people, according to National Emergency Management Agency figures.

Outbreaks of flooding are far from unusual in the region’s often heavy rainy season.

But scientists have long warned that climate change driven by man-made fossil fuel emissions is causing more frequent, more intense and longer-lasting periods of extreme weather.

With a slew of record temperatures, heatwaves, drought and severe flooding, this summer has been the hottest ever recorded globally.