NEW DELHI: Tens of thousands of people fled their homes in low-lying areas of southern India and moved to evacuation shelters on Wednesday to escape a cyclone that was barreling toward the region’s coast.
Cyclone Nivar is expected to bring heavy downpours after slamming ashore near Mamallapuram and Karaikal in Tamil Nadu state, the Meteorological Department said.
The storm, with sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 145 kph (90 mph), is likely to damage crops, trees, houses and electrical poles, it said in a statement.
S.N. Pradhan, director of India’s National Disaster Response Force, said thousands of emergency personnel have been deployed in coastal regions of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry states, where the cyclone was expected to hit Wednesday night.
State governments were expecting widespread damage and canceled flights and trains as a precaution.
In Tamil Nadu’s capital, Chennai, authorities said they are closely monitoring the level of reservoirs and lakes to avoid a repeat of floods in 2015, when nearly 430 people died in the state. Flights at Chennai Airport will remain suspended until Thursday morning.
In Puducherry, top official Kiran Bedi appealed to residents to move to higher areas and stay indoors.
“Move to high places wherever you have to. There are relief centers. Please move there,” Bedi said in a video message on Twitter.
In May, nearly 100 people died after Cyclone Amphan, the most powerful storm to hit eastern India in more than a decade, ravaged the region and left millions without power.
Tens of thousands evacuated as India braces for cyclone
https://arab.news/mvda8
Tens of thousands evacuated as India braces for cyclone
- The storm, with sustained winds of 120 kilometers (75 miles) per hour and gusts of up to 145 kph (90 mph), is likely to damage crops, trees and houses
- State governments were expecting widespread damage and canceled flights and trains as a precaution
French court slashes jails term for trio over 2020 teacher beheading
- Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years
PARIS, France: A French court on Monday reduced on appeal the jail sentences of three men convicted over the 2020 terrorist beheading of a teacher who showed a class cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Samuel Paty, 47, was murdered in October 2020 by an 18-year-old radical Islamist of Chechen origin in an act that horrified France.
His attacker, Abdoullakh Anzorov, was killed in a shootout with police.
Two friends of Anzorov, French national Naim Boudaoud and Azim Epsirkhanov, a Russian of Chechen origin, had their sentences of 16 years in prison reduced to six and seven years respectively by a Paris court of appeal.
Both were accused of having driven Anzorov and helping him to procure weapons before the beheading.
Brahim Chnina, the Moroccan father of a girl who falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing the caricatures, had his 13-year sentence reduced to 10 years.
His daughter, then aged 13, was not actually in the classroom at the time and during the first trial apologized to the teacher’s family.
The court however left the 15-year term for French-Moroccan Islamist activist Abdelhakim Sefrioui untouched.
The quartet were among the seven men and one woman found guilty in 2024 of contributing to the climate of hatred that led to the beheading of the history and geography teacher in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, west of Paris.
Paty, who has become a free-speech icon, used the cartoons as part of an ethics class to discuss freedom of expression laws in France.
