Saudi flood victim toll increases

Saudi emergency services have said the toll from floods that tore through the port city of Jeddah this week has risen to 106.

Torrents of water inundated the Red Sea port on Wednesday after Saudi Arabia saw some of the heaviest rainfall in years. Some 1,400 residents had to be rescued.

Many of the victims were drowned or were killed by collapsing bridges and in car crashes.

Civil defence planes flew over the affected areas searching for missing people, the Jeddah authorities said in a statement to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA).

No pilgrims attending the annual Muslim haj pilgrimage 80 km away in Mecca were among the dead, though Jeddah is the main point of travel for pilgrims leaving the city.

But Al Jazeera correspondent Omar Chtriwala reports on Sunday that bodies are still being recovered and that the toll is likely to rise.

Local anger places the blame for the high number of fatalities firmly with the government.

Waleed Abu al-Khair, a Riyadh-based human rights lawyer, says he plan to file complaints against the civic service departments.

A group launched on Facebook earlier in the week entitled “National Campaign to Save the City of Jeddah” in Arabic, criticises the government response and has registered 11,000 members so far.

Numerous media reports have flagged up the issue of Jeddah’s poor drainage and infrastructure in recent years, and the city saw water shortages over summer.

Saudi authorities said they are working around the clock to clear Jeddah’s roads of hundreds of vehicles destroyed by the floods before pilgrims from abroad begin to leave the country via the city’s air and sea ports.

The Saudi interior ministry on Saturday said 1.6 million visas had been issued to pilgrims from abroad, while around 700,000 permits were granted to those coming from inside the kingdom. Public security data, however, showed more than 2.5 million people had entered the Jamarat Bridge on Friday.

Al Jazeera

Haj pilgrims stranded by floods

JEDDAH :The heaviest rainfall in years triggered flooding that wiped out bridges and streets in Mecca province, stranding Haj pilgrims and killing at least 77 people, none of whom were pilgrims.

The deaths also increased worries about the country’s infrastructure as more than a million people made their way through the port city of Jeddah, the gateway to the Haj in Mecca.

About 1.6 million pilgrims have come to Saudi Arabia from abroad for the Haj this year, the world’s largest yearly religious gathering.

The state-run Saudi Press Agency said Wednesday’s deaths were in Jeddah, Rabigh and Mecca. The statement blamed the deaths on flooding and collapsed homes.

The floods forced the closure of a motorway to Mecca, stranding pilgrims who were unable to complete their journey. A spokesman for the Saudi interior ministry, Brig Gen Mansour al-Turki, said yesterday that none of the casualties were among the millions of pilgrims.

At least 900 people had to be rescued after being stranded by the floodwaters, according to a statement by the kingdom’s civil defence rescue service on Wednesday.

The downpours ceased yesterday but the rescue service warned residents not to go outside today as it expects to see more rain.

According to the civil defence, about 3,000 cars drifted away in the floods in Jeddah. An eyewitness said he saw at least 30 people carried away by floods in South Jeddah.Jeddah, which saw rainfall of up to 76mm on Wednesday morning, lacks drainage systems to handle the inundation, although the government says over the past five years it has allocated billions of riyals to developing such a system.

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Deadly flash floods hit Istanbul

At least 31 people have been killed in flash floods in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, which has left cars and lorries stranded across highways after the heaviest rains in the region in 80 years.

The dead included seven women who drowned in a minibus taking them to work on Wednesday, the Anatolian news agency said.

Mustafa Demir, Turkey's procurement minister, said on Wednesday: "We are saddened by the loss of lives. There are still some people missing and we are searching for them.

"There is huge damage to infrastructure."

Sources told Al Jazeera that 31 people had been killed in two days, including 21 in Istanbul and two in Tekirdag province on Wednesday.

Muammer Guler, Istanbul's governor, said more than 20 people were also injured in floods on Wednesday, and added that heavy rains were expected to continue throughout the week.

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Istanbul, said the poorer members of the city's community were the most affected by the flooding.

"A lot of the damage to Istanbul is in areas of recent construction, areas of rapid industrialisation.

"The blaming has already started in the municipality, with one minister saying that people had built their homes before they could properly put the infrastructure in place - they're talking about decent drainage and storm water."

She said the areas hit were "vulnerable to these uncontrollable, unmanageable weather events".

Severe weather conditions have caused two streams to swell and overflow, inundating dozens of homes and workplaces.

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Source: Al Jazeera (English)