Matadi

The city's busiest road, which connects the centre with the international airport, is impassable, as is some of the motorway that connects the capital to the country's main port, Matadi.

A massive sinkhole washed away a large section of the N1 highway, which connects the capital to the port city of Matadi.

"All of a sudden I saw the side part of the bedroom give way and fall on my wife and three of our children," said the 48-year-old, standing amid the rubble of the shack in Kinshasa's Matadi Mayo neighbourhood.

The damage affected several parts of the city but was particularly bad in Matadi Mayo, in the Mont-Ngafula district, where a section of Congo's main national highway, the N1, was swept away.

"I left my wife and children in Matadi and here I am stuck at the door of Kinshasa," said Yves Lutadila, a truck driver carrying second-hand clothes.