Volunteers Join Grim Search for Malawi Flood Victims

While helicopters and boats have been deployed in a military search and rescue operation for victims of devastating floods in Malawi, families and friends of the missing are digging for bodies.

Armed only with hoes, six young men on Saturday combed the banks of a new watercourse created by flash floods through Chilobwe, a shantytown five kilometres (three miles) from the commercial capital Blantyre.

Digging at heaps of sand and debris, they were hoping to find the bodies of three people who were swept away five days earlier.

"We have not lost hope. We hope to find the bodies to give our friends a dignified funeral," Rodney Chikoja, one of the volunteers, told Agence France Presse.

Among those missing is a medical student who was set to graduate this year and had returned home for a weekend to visit his parents, who survived the disaster.

A total of 176 people have been confirmed dead in the floods, with 153 missing and 200,000 homeless, according to official figures.

The floods have wreaked havoc across half the impoverished southern African country's 28 districts, washing away homes, crops and livestock and disrupting power supplies.

Police said four bodies had already been found along the stream through Chilobwe, buried in sand.

"One body was found five kilometres downstream. So you can see how powerful the flood was," said a constable, who refused to give her name, but said she helped organise the search effort.

Survivor Felistus Selemani said it was a "miracle our family of five is still alive today and our house intact".

Selemani said it was because their three-bedroomed home was built with bricks and cement that it survived destruction.

"There was fast running water all over our house. It was a terrifying moment and luckily we all survived after what was a nightmare," Selemani said.

Although it was not raining in Blantyre on Saturday, weather experts said the "risks of flooding are still very high", mainly in the southern districts of Chikwawa and Nsanje, the worst affected areas.