Sharjah24 - AFP: The heaviest flooding to hit Ecuador in two decades has killed at least 24 people in Quito, inundating homes, swamping cars and sweeping away athletes and spectators on a sports field, officials said Tuesday.
A dozen people are missing and 48 injured, Ecuador's SNGRE emergency service said on Twitter.
Video footage showed torrents of water carrying stones, mud and debris down streets in the Ecuadoran capital, as rescuers helped inhabitants wade through the fast-running currents to safety.
Many in the city of 2.7 million people were taken to shelters, as authorities declared three days of mourning starting Tuesday.
Rain that drenched Quito for 17 straight hours caused a deluge that damaged roads, agricultural areas, clinics, schools, a police station and an electric power substation.
Quito mayor Santiago Guarderas said a downpour had overwhelmed a hillside water catchment structure that had a capacity of 4,500 cubic meters but was inundated with more than four times that volume.
The resultant failure sent a kilometer-long (half-mile-long) deluge through a sports field where volleyball players were practicing with spectators on the sidelines.
"People who were playing couldn't get away. It grabbed them suddenly," witness Freddy Barrios Gonzalez told AFP.
"Those who managed to run were saved (but) a family got buried" under a river of mud, added Gonzalez, his own clothes still muddy from the ordeal.
"There they died."
It was not immediately known how many of the players or spectators were among the total number of dead and injured.
Soldiers with rescue dogs were scouring the area around the field for survivors.
Quito police chief Cesar Zapata did not rule out finding more bodies under thousands of cubic meters (cubic feet) of mud and debris left behind by the flood.
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