A major rescue mission is being mounted in the Fish River Canyon to rescue close to a hundred hikers trapped in the canyon by rising waters.

||Kharas Police Regional Commander Marius Katamila has confirmed that 96 hikers are trapped in the canyon due to an inflow of water released from the Naute and Neckertal dams over the weekend. 

Commissioner Katamila says the group is part of nine groups, including school children, that went on a hiking trail in the canyon. 

The canyon's water levels started rising after the sluice gates of Naute Dam were opened on Sunday after the reservoir surpassed its 100% capacity. 

The Neckartal Dam also started spilling over on Sunday after its capacity reached 105%. Commissioner Katamila says members of the Police Special Reserve Force Unit were dispatched to the canyon to rescue the trapped hikers.

"So to mitigate this, we have put into action a rescue mission. The Namibian police from Keetmanshoop have deployed two teams, one to Hobas and the other one to Ai-Ais that those are members of our Special Reserve Force that will go down there to assist with the rescue. We have also the Namibian police air support services, helicopter that just landed in Hobas.They will be now doing flights out of the canyon trying to rescue all the hikers that are within the canyon. So those arrangements are in place.The difficulty is we are not having all the coordinates as to where all of them are and from my understanding they are also allegedly a group of school children that are also one particular hiking group but as we speak operations are up and running and the rescue mission is in progress," explains Commissioner Katamila

Several civil organisations are also on site to assist in the rescue.