Floods have killed at least 29 people in the Algerian oasis town of Ghardaia in the Sahara, the government of the north African country said on Thursday. An interior ministry statement added that 48 people had been injured and one person had gone missing since heavy rains began on Tuesday around the town on the northern edge of the Sahara desert, the official APS state news agency reported. Earlier Interior Minister Noureddine Yazid Zerhouni issued a preliminary toll of 13 dead and said that between 300 and 600 homes had been inundated in the town of about 100,000 people 700 km (437 miles) south of the capital Algiers. He said gas and electricity had been cut and food supplies had been flooded and probably rendered useless. Ghardaia is one of several fortified Mozabite Berber medieval settlements in the M'Zab valley, a region listed as a UN World Heritage Site and frequented by European tourists. (Reporting by William Maclean, editing by Matthew Jones)