Dam

The death toll from the devastating floods caused by a collapsed dam in northern Syria has risen to 20.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed leaving thousands of people homeless when the six-year-old Zeyzoun dam north of Hama ruptured on Tuesday.

"The number of victims has risen to 20, and four people have been reported missing in the most recent toll of human losses from the collapse of the dam," official newspapers quoted the state-run SANA news agency as saying on Thursday.

It is feared that subsiding waters could reveal more deaths.

Aqil added: "The submerged area is 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres), leading to the destruction of seasonal wheat, barley and beets."

He estimated that between up to 4,000 people have been displaced by the floods.

Syria has said it will seek financial and logistical help from international aid agencies to deal with the floods, and has been offered a grant of some $40,000 by the Japanese embassy in Damascus to help pay for relief efforts.

President Bashar al-Assad has ordered 50,000 Syrian pounds (about $1,000) in aid for each of the victims, SANA added.

People living near the village of Zeyzoun on the Orontes River in northern Syria, said they had complained about cracks in the dam, which held 71 million cubic metres of water.

"They made this dam to water all the crops, and wound up killing us with it," an elderly woman told Reuters news agency.

In the nearby village of Ziara, a little more than a mile from the dam, residents described a sudden deluge of water flooding homes and farmland shortly after 2 p.m. on Tuesday.

"When the water started coming, I took my children and wife and ran into the mountains," Yasser Ibrahim, a 33-year-old farmer told The Associated Press.

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