ISTANBUL: The death toll from severe rainstorms that lashed parts of Greece, Turkiye and Bulgaria increased to 14 on Wednesday after rescue teams in the three neighboring countries recovered seven more bodies.
A flash flood at a campsite in northwestern Turkiye near the border with Bulgaria killed at least five people — with three found dead on Wednesday — and carried away bungalow homes. Rescuers were still searching for one person reported missing at the campsite.
Another two people died in Istanbul, Turkiye’s largest city, where Tuesday’s storms inundated hundreds of homes and workplaces in several neighborhoods.
The victims in Istanbul included a 32-year-old Guinean citizen who was trapped inside his basement apartment in the low-income Kucukcekmece district, Turkish broadcaster HaberTurk TV reported. The other was a 57-year-old woman who died after being swept away by the floods in another neighborhood, the private DHA news agency reported.
The surging floodwaters affected more than 1,750 homes and businesses in the city, according to the Istanbul governor’s office. They included a line of shops in the Ikitelli district, where the deluge dragged parked vehicles and mud into furniture stores, destroying the merchandise, DHA reported.
The floods also engulfed a parking area for containers and trucks on the city’s outskirts where people found safety by climbing on top of the roof of a restaurant, Turkish media reports said.
In Greece, record rainfall caused at least three deaths near the central city of Volos and in Karditsa, further to the west, according to the fire service. Three people were reported missing.
Authorities banned traffic in Volos, the nearby mountain region of Pilion and the resort island of Skiathos, where many households remained without electricity and running water on Wednesday. Traffic was also banned in another two regions of central Greece near Volos, while the storms were forecast to continue until at least Thursday afternoon.
In Bulgaria, a storm caused floods on the country’s southern Black Sea coast. The bodies of two missing people were recovered from the sea on Wednesday, raising the overall death toll to four.
Video showed cars and camper vans being swept out to sea in the southern resort town of Tsarevo, where authorities declared a state of emergency.
Most of the rivers in the region burst their banks and several bridges were destroyed, causing serious traffic problems.
Tourism Minister Zaritsa Dinkova said that about 4,000 people were affected by the disaster along the entire southern stretch of Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.
“There is a problem transporting tourists because it is dangerous to go by coach on the roads affected by the floods,” she added.
The death toll from fierce storms and flooding in Greece, Turkiye and Bulgaria has risen to 14
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The death toll from fierce storms and flooding in Greece, Turkiye and Bulgaria has risen to 14
- he storm that hit a campsite in northwestern Turkiye near the border with Bulgaria late Tuesday also flooded streets and hundreds of homes and workplaces in several neighborhoods in Istanbul
Sequestered Suu Kyi overshadows military-run Myanmar election
- Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis
YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerrilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad has been heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar, her name is still a byword for democracy, and her absence on the ballot, an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — remains under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls overwriting her 2020 victory. The second of the three-phase election began Sunday, with Suu Kyi’s constituency of Kawhmu outside Yangon being contested by parties cleared to run in the heavily restricted poll.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of WWII.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonizers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
