Killer floods have ravaged a dozen west African countries since June, leaving 159 people dead and making life miserable for hundreds of thousands, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.

"Nearly 600,000 people are affected by the floods following heavy rains that have poured down on west Africa and caused the deaths of 159 people since June," the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in Dakar.

The hardest-hit countries include Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Sierra Leone.

In Senegal, where more than 264,000 people have been affected by the floods, the government released two billion CFA francs (three million euros, 4.4 million dollars) for the recovery effort.

A couple and their child became the latest victims of the floods in central Senegal Monday when their horse-drawn carriage flipped over, throwing them into a swollen river, according to an official in their village of Keur Ali Maram.

The Burkinabe government appealed for international aid after the disaster killed eight people and left 150,000 homeless. In the capital Ouagadougou, nearly 25,000 homes collapsed on September 1 alone.

The floods have affected nearly 67,000 people in Niger, 55,000 others in Ghana and 20,000 in Benin, according to OCHA.

"It is a very worrisome situation which further weakens populations that are already destitute," said the head of the OCHA regional office in Dakar, Herve Ludovic de Lys.

"Natural disasters have a durable effect that settles in for several decades and reduces to ashes years of efforts in the fight against poverty," he said.

The head of the UN Development Programme in Dakar, Bouri Sanhouidi, said climate change was partly to blame for the heavy rains that triggered the disaster.

But the problem also lies in the lack of preparedness and bad urban planning in west African towns and cities, he said.

"Most of our countries and cities are not prepared to face this kind of catastrophe," Sanhouidi told AFP.

"Many cities have been overwhelmed by the massive arrival of populations seeking a better life who settled down in an anarchical manner in flood zones," he said.

related report
Nine killed in Turkey floods: report
Nine people were killed and two were missing Tuesday as torrential rain triggered floods in northwestern Turkey, media repoprts and officials said.

A family of five were swept away from a farm near the town of Saray, Tekirdag province, when heavy rain caused a river to burst its banks overnight and inundate a large area, causing significant material damage, the town's mayor Nazmi Coban told the Anatolia news agency.

The bodies of the mother and her three daughters, aged six, eight and 12, were found several kilometres (miles) away from the farm. Rescue teams were still looking for the father.

Rescuers also discovered the bodies of an elderly couple among the wreckage of a nearby house that was swept away by the flooding, Coban told Anatolia.

In Silivri, a seaside suburb of Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, one person died of a heart attack when flood waters gushed into his home, governor Muammer Gulen told the Anatolia news agency.

Rescuers were searching for a two-year-old girl washed away by the flood in a car from which her mother and sister managed to get out safely, he added.

Dozens of people were evacuated from their homes by military helicopters and small boats.

Footage broadcast on television showed large parts of the Silivri shore inundated as flood waters gushing into the sea where cars were clearly visible among moored boats.

Two other victims died in the Istanbul suburb of Catalca when they were swept away the gushing waters, sub-governor Yuksel Ayhan told the NTV news channel.

The storm in Istanbul also caused a Cambodian-flagged bulk carrier to run aground near the suburb Kilyos on the Black Sea coast, newspapers said Tuesday.

The vessel later broke in two under the impact of massive waves, they added.

The 12-strong crew of Ukrainians, Georgians and Azeris, was rescued by Turkish coast guard.