ISTANBUL: The death toll from severe floods and mudslides along Turkey's Black Sea coast has climbed to at least 51, the country's emergency and disaster agency said Saturday, as authorities disputed reports that hundreds of people were missing.
Torrential rains that pounded the Black Sea provinces of Bartin, Kastamonu and Sinop on Wednesday caused flooding that demolished homes, severed at least five bridges, swept away cars and rendered numerous roads unpassable. Turkish disaster agency AFAD said 43 people were killed in Kastamonu, seven in Sinop and one in Bartin.
Nine people remained hospitalized, according to the agency.
Some residents in Kastamonu said on social media that there are hundreds more missing, a statement also made by an opposition lawmaker. But the provincial governor's office said that reports about 250 unidentified bodies were untrue. It did not specifically address how many people could be missing in the flooding.
Rescue teams and sniffer dogs kept up the painstaking task of trying to locate residents. AFAD said 5,820 personnel, 20 rescue dogs, 20 helicopters and two search planes were at the disaster spots.
About 2,250 people were evacuated across the region amid the floods, scores of them lifted from rooftops by helicopters. Many are being temporarily housed in student dormitories.
Climate scientists unequivocally say that climate change is leading to more extreme weather events as the world warms because of the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Experts in Turkey, however, said interference with rivers and improper construction also contributed to the massive flood damage.
Geologists say that construction narrowed the river bed and the surrounding alluvial flood plain of the Ezine stream in Kastamonu’s Bozkurt district, where the damage was most severe, from 400 meters (1,312 feet) wide to 15 meters (49 feet). Residential buildings were also built along the waterfront.
During severe rains, the constricted stream can only overflow. Videos posted by residents showed water rushing downstream in Bozkurt as buildings and roads flooded. One geologist, Ramazan Demirtas, explained the river bed narrowing on Twitter and said humans were to blame for this week's disaster.
In Sinop, floodwaters almost completely wiped out the village of Babacay, leaving toppled homes, damaged bridges and rubble in their wake. A five-story apartment building constructed on a riverbed was destroyed. Turkish broadcaster CNN Turk showed only an entrance door and wall remaining.
Across the Black Sea, days of heavy rain also produced flooding in broad areas of southern Russia. Authorities in the Krasnodar region said Saturday that more than 1,400 houses flooded following storms that swept the area this week. About 108,000 residents of 11 settlements were left without power.
The regional Russian emergency headquarters said over 1,530 people have been evacuated. The Black Sea resort city of Anapa was among the worst affected. Officials have warned that heavy rain was expected for another two days.
The floods struck on the heels of wildfires in southern Turkey that devastated forests in the seaside provinces of Mugla and Antalya, which are popular with tourists. At least 16 people died in those wildfires — including eight emergency workers as their firefighting plane crashed Saturday — and thousands of residents and tourists were forced to flee.
Turkey: Flood deaths rise to at least 51 as rescuers push on
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Turkey: Flood deaths rise to at least 51 as rescuers push on
- Nine people remained hospitalized
- Rescue teams and sniffer dogs kept up the painstaking task of trying to locate residents
5 bodies of migrants washed ashore in east of Libya’s capital Tripoli, police officer says
TRIPOLI: At least five bodies of migrants including two women have been washed ashore in َQasr Al-Akhyar, a coastal town in the east of Libya’s capital Tripoli, a police officer told Reuters on Saturday.
Hassan Al-Ghawil, head of investigations at the Qasr Al-Akhyar police station, said that according to people in the area, a child’s body washed ashore and because of the waves’ height the body returned to the sea, and the coast guard was asked to search for it.
Ghawil said the bodies are all dark-skinned people. The bodies were found on Emhamid Al-Sharif shore in the western part of the town by people who reported to the police station.
Libya has become a transit route for migrants fleeing conflict and poverty to Europe across the Mediterranean since the fall in 2011 of dictator Muammar Qaddafi to a NATO-backed uprising. Factional conflict has split the country into western and eastern factions since 2014.
Qasr Al-Akhyar is a coastal town some 73 kilometers (45 miles) east of Tripoli.
Pictures were posted on the Internet, and also seen by Reuters, showing the bodies of the migrants lying on the shore, where some were still within black inflatable lifebuoys.
“We reported to the Red Crescent to recover the bodies,” said Ghawil. “The bodies we found are still intact and we think there are more bodies to wash ashore.”
Earlier this month, fifty-three migrants, including two babies, were dead or missing after a rubber boat carrying 55 people capsized off the coast of Zuwara town in western Tripoli, the International Organization for Migration said.
Last week, a UN report said migrants in Libya, including young girls, are at risk of being killed, tortured, raped or put into domestic slavery, calling for a moratorium on the return of migrant boats to the country until human rights are ensured.
