A young Ethiopian man who jumped from a moving bus and waded through a flooded river to save a 10-year-old boy from drowning has been hailed an “angel”.
The rescuer, Abdi Tufa, said he was hit by rocks and logs that had been carried by the flood waters from the highlands but he kept going until he reached Riyad Nesru.
“My leg is broken. My back and waist are badly injured. I am getting treatment now,” he told BBC Afaan Oromoo.
Abdi, who was travelling in a bus to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, was jolted from sleep by the anguished screams of villagers calling for help to rescue Riyad, whom they feared was minutes away from drowning or being swept away by raging flood waters.
The boy had been trapped in the flood while out herding his family’s goats in the small town of Hirna, 350km (220 miles) east of Addis Ababa.
Abdi says he jumped out of the window of the bus in a spur-of-the-moment decision, shocking the other passengers and then going into the river.
“I just saw the child through the window. He was about to drown yet no one was heading to save him,” he told BBC Afaan Oromoo of the moment he opted to help the helpless boy.
Abdi is still recovering under the care of the boy’s family. He said he was too injured to even walk on his own but that he was happy to have saved the boy’s life.
Riyad’s uncle said that the family viewed Abdi as “an angel who was sent by God to save our child”.
”We would have been bereaved [by now]. Abdi is a hero. Now we see him as our oldest son,” Nasir Ibroshe said, adding that the family will look after Abdi until he gets better.
