BEIJING (AFP) - Flooding in North Korea that has destroyed thousands of homes is the worst to hit the impoverished country in 10 years, the head of an international relief group in Pyongyang said Wednesday.
"This is definitely the worst flooding in a decade," the acting head of delegation for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Terje Lysholm, told AFP by phone.
Lysholm said six provinces had been flooded, with South Hamgyong on the east coast and Kangwon near the border with South Korea suffering the most damage.
He said IFRC assessment teams were still gathering information from the affected areas, and that compiling reliable data was difficult, but at least 14,000 houses were confirmed to have been destroyed in the two worst-hit areas.
Public buildings, such as hospitals and schools, in South Hamgyong and Kangwon had also been destroyed or damaged, according to Lysholm.
Lysholm said he could not confirm a World Food Programme assessment that up to 300,000 people in North Korea may have been affected.
"(But) the figures are definitely high. When you talk about thousands of houses being totally destroyed, there are others that are partly damaged. So all the people affected could come up to very high numbers."
Lysholm also warned of the lasting impacts of the flooding, with at least 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of rice fields and other farmland being inundated.
"This will affect crops for this year... and it will have a impact on the total food situation in the coming years," he said.
However Lysholm said that despite dramatic images of flooding in Pyongyang itself, most of the capital had not been badly affected.
He said the worst of the flooding in Pyongyang was mainly restricted to the low-lying areas near the Taedong River.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported earlier this week that downpours since August 7 had caused "huge human and material damage".
As of August 12 they had left hundreds of people dead or missing and destroyed more than 30,000 houses for over 63,300 families, it said.
According to KCNA, at least 800 public buildings, more than 540 bridges and sections of railway have been destroyed, with tens of thousands of hectares of farmland "inundated, buried under silt and washed away."