SYDNEY: Seven people have drowned as a heatwave grips Australia, sending big crowds to the beach to cool down, while a tropical depression in the far north threatens to turn into a cyclone by New Year’s Day.
Five of the deaths were in the southeastern state of Victoria between Christmas Eve and Saturday. A South Korean drowned on Christmas Day while snorkelling in a lake in the eastern state of New South Wales while another man died in surf on the Sunshine Coast in the eastern state of Queensland.
Temperatures have soared over 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) from Western Australia down through the sparsely populated central desert into the populous eastern seaboard states for seven days, with the weather bureau predicting the heat to continue after a brief New Year’s Eve respite.
“Over the coming days the heat will contract inland but will build again from mid-week on Wednesday,” said Jonathan How, a forecaster at the Bureau of Meteorology.
The bureau’s “extreme heatwave” warning included Australia’s most populous city, Sydney, but sea-side cities including Hobart, Adelaide and Melbourne were cooled by sea breezes.
For the four-fifths of Australia’s 25 million people who live on the coast, summer’s heat typically sends them out to laze on the beach.
But for those who live in the arid center there is little respite.
At the Kulgera Road House, near the center of Australia where the nearest town has a population of just 15, the temperature was so high the petrol pumps seized up.
“It’s so hot the fuel doesn’t flow,” said Shelley Safran, the acting manager, by telephone.
The recent hot spell broke records on Thursday at Marble Bar in Western Australia’s mineral-rich Pilbara region, where the mercury hit 49.3 Celsius (120.74 F), the highest recorded since the weather station opened in 1999. December is the beginning of the Southern Hemisphere summer and the season brings cyclonic rains to the country’s far north.
A tropical low has formed off the coast of far north Queensland which the weather bureau says has a moderate chance of developing into a cyclone over the next few days.
The bureau issued a storm warning on Sunday for damaging winds and flooding rains over the Cape York Peninsula on the far northern tip of Australia, including the bauxite mining town of Weipa.
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Heatwave bakes Australia for 7th straight day as northern cyclone brews
Heatwave bakes Australia for 7th straight day as northern cyclone brews
- Temperatures have soared over 40 degrees Celsius (104 F) from Western Australia down through the sparsely populated central desert into the populous eastern seaboard states for seven days
- For the four-fifths of Australia’s 25 million people who live on the coast, summer’s heat typically sends them out to laze on the beach
UN arrives in east DR Congo town to prepare ceasefire mission
KINSHASA: A team of UN peacekeepers arrived in the flashpoint eastern Democratic Republic of Congo town of Uvira to prepare the deployment of a ceasefire?monitoring mission, the force said Tuesday.
Eastern DRC has been ravaged by three decades of conflict and faces renewed violence following the 2021 resurgence of the M23 armed group, backed by Rwanda and its army.
The M23 seized large swathes of territory in the east and launched an offensive in December on Uvira, a strategic town in South Kivu province near the border with Burundi.
The assault drew condemnation from the United States, which has mediated a fragile peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda.
That agreement provided for the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to carry out a field-monitoring operation with a view to implementing a permanent ceasefire.
On Tuesday, MONUSCO and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, a grouping of surrounding countries, said in a statement they had deployed a joint exploratory and preliminary assessment mission to Uvira.
Scheduled to run until Friday, the mission focuses on assessing access, security, logistics and engagement needs, MONUSCO said.
The statement called the mission “an essential step toward deploying the future joint ceasefire?monitoring mechanism.”
In January, the M23 withdrew its last troops from Uvira, claiming it was responding to a US request. The Congolese army said it had retaken control of the town.
Eastern DRC has been ravaged by three decades of conflict and faces renewed violence following the 2021 resurgence of the M23 armed group, backed by Rwanda and its army.
The M23 seized large swathes of territory in the east and launched an offensive in December on Uvira, a strategic town in South Kivu province near the border with Burundi.
The assault drew condemnation from the United States, which has mediated a fragile peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda.
That agreement provided for the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to carry out a field-monitoring operation with a view to implementing a permanent ceasefire.
On Tuesday, MONUSCO and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, a grouping of surrounding countries, said in a statement they had deployed a joint exploratory and preliminary assessment mission to Uvira.
Scheduled to run until Friday, the mission focuses on assessing access, security, logistics and engagement needs, MONUSCO said.
The statement called the mission “an essential step toward deploying the future joint ceasefire?monitoring mechanism.”
In January, the M23 withdrew its last troops from Uvira, claiming it was responding to a US request. The Congolese army said it had retaken control of the town.
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