At least 42 people were killed after their houses were swept away Tuesday in a landslide caused by torrential rain in the western Cameroon city of Bafoussam, state media reported, showing images of rescuers desperately sifting through rubble for survivors.

"Searches are ongoing. We fear there are further deaths," a senior local official told AFP on condition of anonymity as nightfall neared.

A total of 42 bodies were taken to the hospital in the city, according to an official statement read on Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV).

Media reports had earlier spoken of about 30 dead, with the radio reporting that four pregnant women were among the victims.

Pictures of the tragedy in Bafouassam posted on social media showed ramshackle houses having crumbled into the ochre-coloured terrain and men clad in hard hats digging away at piles of mud in the search for survivors.

"The houses that collapsed were built on the side of a hill in a risk zone," said the local official in the West Region, of which Bafoussam is the capital, some 300 kilometres (185 miles) northwest of the capital Yaounde.

He said the landslide was caused by torrential rains that have fallen in the country over the past few days as well as the wider region, with neighbouring Central African Republic and Nigeria also seriously hit.

Cameroon President Paul Biya offered his condolences to families of the victims in a message broadcast on CRTV.

Landslides are quite exceptional in the area although further south they are less rare in the rainy season, notably in the English-speaking southwest.

It was in the southwestern coastal resort town of Limbe that five people died in a landslide following flooding in July last year.

Neighbouring Central African Republic, already mired in a brutal civil war, is reeling from 10 days of torrential rain which have plunged swathes of the country underwater, creating a new emergency in one of the world's poorest nations.

Tens of thousands of people have been left homeless after the CAR's largest river, the Oubangui, burst its banks at the height of the country's worst floods in decades which have left parts of the capital Bangui submerged, prompting authorities to warn of the risk of cholera.

Several agrarian states in another Cameroon neighbour, Nigeria, have also been hit by flooding. A torrential downpour Monday allowed dozens of inmates to escape from prison in the central state of Kogi.

More than 100 inmates escape Nigeria prison after torrential rain
Lagos (AFP) Oct 29, 2019 –

Torrential rains in central Nigerian Kogi State allowed more than a hundred inmates to escape from prison, a spokesman for the country's prison service said on Tuesday.

The "perimeter fence" of the prison was destroyed by rains and cells flooded, forcing inmates "to break out of custody for safety," Francis Enobore of the Nigerian Correctional Service said in a statement.

"A torrential downpour on Monday 28th October, 2019, caused a surging flood that overran the centre at about 0200hrs (GMT) pulling down a section of the perimeter fence," he said,

"122 of them took the opportunity to escape, 105 remained on the spot," Enobore said, adding "25 of the escapees have been recaptured leaving 97 still at large."

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country Africa has been particularly affected by heavy rains that have continued to fall, after the end of the rainy season.

The agrarian, central states of Niger, Benue, Kogi and Taraba have been affected by flooding in recent months.

The rains have destroyed crops in the country's key agricultural belt, and forced tens of thousands of people to leave their homes, according to the National Emergency Management Agency.

In the northeastern state of Adamawa, more than 40 villages have also been totally destroyed by downpour in recent days local news reports said.