AKIPRESS.COM - Flash flooding killed at least three people and left 10,000 homeless in the Solomon Islands' capital Honiara on Friday, with another 30 missing and the death toll expected to rise, ReliefWeb reported.

Entire communities were swept away as the city's main river, the Matanikau, burst its banks late Thursday, bringing down bridges and inundating the downtown area in a disaster observers said was one of the worst ever faced by the Pacific nation.

16 evacuation centers had been set up in local schools to provide shelter for more than 10,000 homeless people, a huge proportion of the population in a city of only 70,000.

Dengue fever, already common on the Solomons, was a major concern in the evacuation camps.

UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' (OCHA) regional director Sune Gudnitz said the flooding followed days of heavy rain which was still falling.