The death toll from devastating flooding in a market town in Nigeria’s north-central state of Niger rose to at least 200 on Sunday, a local official said.

Torrents of predawn rainfall early Thursday unleashed the devastating flood on Mokwa, nearly 380 kilometers (236 miles) west of Abuja and a major trading and transportation hub where northern Nigerian farmers sell beans, onions and other food to traders from the south.

The deputy chairman of Mokwa Local Government, Musa Kimboku, confirmed the updated fatality count to The Associated Press new agency on Sunday.

He said rescue operations have been called off, as authorities no longer believe there are any survivors. To prevent the outbreak of disease, officials are currently exhuming bodies buried beneath the rubble, Kimboku added.

It’s one of the worst floods in Nigeria in decades, leaving survivors terrified and stranded.

People swept into powerful river

Adamu Yusuf was preparing to go to the Mokwa market on Thursday morning when he heard his neighbour shouting: floodwaters.

Water had been building up for days behind an abandoned railway track that runs along the edge of the town, residents told AFP.

It was not the first time heavy rains had accumulated behind the mud mounds on which the tracks stand, but it would soon be the deadliest.

Climate change has made weather swings in Nigeria more extreme, but it became clear that other human factors were also at play.

Floodwaters would usually pass through a couple of culverts in the mounds and run into a narrow channel. But this time, debris had blocked the culverts, forcing water to build up behind the clay walls that eventually gave way.

The resulting flood swept through the community, flattening it within hours. Volunteers and disaster response teams have been fanning out in the days since, sometimes recovering bodies nearly 10 kilometres (six miles) away after people were swept into the powerful Niger River.

‘Never seen anything like this’

Yusuf struggled to save his family, before being knocked unconscious by the floodwaters. When he woke up in hospital, he was told his wife, son, mother and other relatives -- nine in total -- had been swept away. Only one body has been recovered. "I don't know who rescued me," Yusuf, 36, told AFP news agency.

He stood where his house used to be as residents, including children as young as 10, dug through debris in search of bodies.

A powerful stench filled the air, which residents said came from decaying corpses trapped under the rubble. Carcasses and puddles littered the area, and a huge gully now sits in the centre of the community.

The only excavator working nearby was focused on piling boulders to reinforce a small bridge on the edge of the community that had been destroyed by the flood.

"I have never seen anything like this in my 42 years of existence," said Adamu Usama, a civil engineer who said he lost 10 in-laws to the flood. His house was barely spared.

"We saw the water carrying people but we cannot save (them), because we don't know how to swim."

‘Death toll just a guess’

Days before the disaster struck Mokwa, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency had warned of possible flash floods in 15 of Nigeria's 36 states, including Niger state, between Wednesday and Friday.

Floods in Nigeria are exacerbated by inadequate drainage, the construction of homes on waterways and the dumping of waste in drains and water channels.

In 2024, floods killed 321 people across 34 of Nigeria's 36 states, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). The Mokwa floods alone this year threaten to top that.

The Niger state emergency management agency said 153 people were killed in Mokwa as of Sunday, all of whom have been buried. But residents and traditional rulers insist the number is far higher.

"Anybody that tells you this is the number of people that died is just guessing," one resident, Saliu Adamu, 45, said.

Although President Bola Tinubu said the disaster response was being aided by security forces, only a handful of soldiers and police were at the scene on Sunday afternoon, mostly to ease traffic that had built up because of the damaged bridge.

Bridges collapse

The state governor, Mohammed Umar Bago, is in Saudi Arabia for the hajj pilgrimage. Residents said his deputy, Yakubu Garba, had visited. Many people who lost their loved ones and property are still waiting for assistance.

On Saturday, the spokesperson for the Niger State emergency service, Ibrahim Audu Husseini, said an additional 11 people were injured and more than 3,000 people were displaced.

At least 500 households across three communities were affected by the sudden and intense flood that built rapidly in about five hours, leaving roofs barely visible and surviving residents waist-deep in water, trying to salvage what they could and rescue others.

Husseini added that two roads were washed away and two bridges collapsed. In a statement on Friday night, President Bola Tinubu expressed condolences and said he had directed the activation of an emergency response to support victims and “accelerate” recovery.

Flooding is common during Nigeria’s rainy season. Some communities in northern Nigeria have been experiencing prolonged dry spells worsened by climate change and excessive rainfall that leads to severe flooding during the brief wet season. But this flood has been particularly deadly in Mokwa, a farming region near the banks of the River Niger.

Mokwa community leader Aliki Musa said the town is not used to such flooding.