Death toll reaches at least 200 in Nigerian town submerged in floods as rescue efforts halted

ABUJA, Nigeria (AP) — 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 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.

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 wet season. 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 villagers are not used to such flooding.

The chairman of the Mokwa local government area, Jibril Muregi, told local news website Premium Times that construction of flood-control works was long overdue.

A boy walks past a flooded area after heavy rainfall in the market town of Mokwa, north-central Nigeria, Saturday May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Usman Salihu Mokwa)

People gathered in a flooded area after heavy rainfall in the market town of Mokwa, north-central Nigeria, Saturday May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Usman Salihu Mokwa)

People salvage their belongings in a flooded area after heavy rainfall in the market town of Mokwa, north-central Nigeria, Saturday May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Usman Salihu Mokwa)

A woman sits in a flooded area after heavy rainfall in the market town of Mokwa, north-central Nigeria, Saturday May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Usman Salihu Mokwa)

A man searches the rubble in a flooded area after heavy rainfall in the market town of Mokwa, north-central Nigeria, Saturday May 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Usman Salihu Mokwa)

CAIRO (AP) — Iranians began to regain internet access on Wednesday after authorities ended a monthslong shutdown. But users said service was slow and spotty in some areas, with apps like YouTube and Instagram heavily restricted, as they were before the cutoff began during nationwide protests in January.

Authorities justified the outage as a military imperative after the United States and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. Their decision to lift some restrictions this week came as negotiators appeared to be closing in on a more permanent truce. But many Iranians feared access could be cut off again at a moment's notice.

Internet tracking company Netblocks said Iran’s connectivity, which measures the ability of devices to connect to the internet, is at around 86% of capacity from before the cutoff. Internet analysis firm Kentik said internet traffic, which measures the amount of data transferred and is a good illustration of usage, was at around 40%.

Amir Rashidi, an Iranian cybersecurity analyst, said there were still widespread disruptions. “It's too early to say the shutdown is over,” he wrote on X.

Iran’s roughly 90 million people have been cut off from the internet for most of 2026, one of the world’s longest and strictest national shutdowns. Young people with online careers saw their incomes evaporate. Job losses and the closure of online businesses added to the war's steep economic costs.

The cutoff made it difficult for Iranian families to communicate through months of unrest and war. At some points, phone lines were also cut off, though they were later restored.

A woman living in Tehran said that for months she was barely able to speak to her sons living abroad. She couldn't believe authorities had restored access, saying she had assumed they would find some justification to prolong the outage.

A taxi driver said service was restored but weak. He expressed hope it would improve so he could use messaging apps with family and friends. Both spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

Prices spiked during the shutdown, with residents in Tehran at times paying around $7.50 per gigabyte. Prices are back down to around $2.25 for 30 gigabytes, roughly where they were before the protests.

Even then, Iran tightly controlled access to popular social media sites, leading many to rely on virtual private networks, or VPNs. The cost of those workarounds soared during the shutdown, making them unaffordable for many as the economy was battered.

Businesses have started reappearing online, announcing their return with posts on sites like Instagram and Telegram.

A gamer and tech influencer in the central city of Isfahan said the shutdown had caused him to lose a lot of his audience on YouTube and Instagram, where he had spent years building up a large following.

“All my views and interactions are way down. I’ve been erased from the algorithm,” he said in a voice note sent by WhatsApp, adding that his internet connection was still slower than before the shutdown.

“The situation is such that many content producers have had their income reduced to zero, have moved on to other jobs, or have been forced to sell their equipment to survive,” he said. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

Iranian authorities first shut down the internet in January during mass anti-government protests that were eventually stamped out in a violent crackdown. Thousands of people were killed and tens of thousands detained.

That cutoff was just starting to ease when the government imposed a complete internet blackout after the start of the war, when U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran's supreme leader and other top officials.

The government faced criticism for the prolonged shutdown, which caused even more harm to an economy devastated by inflation, strikes on key industries and a U.S. blockade on Iranian ports.

The internet cutoff cost an estimated $30-40 million daily, with indirect losses likely twice that much, a member of Iran’s Chamber of Commerce, Afshin Kolahi, told a local newspaper last month. About 10 million people have jobs that depend on internet connectivity, according to Communications Minister Sattar Hashemi.

Iranians still had access to a national net, but that has a far narrower reach, and users complained of poor service and heavy censorship. Senior government officials are given SIM cards granting them access to the global internet. Under pressure, the government expanded access to the SIM cards to some professions during the shutdown.

A woman checks her smartphone while sitting on a bench along a sidewalk in northern Tehran, Iran, Tuesday, May 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)