Beijing, China: The death toll from a highway collapse in southern China’s Guangdong province has risen to 36, state media said Thursday, as rescue work continued.
Heavy rains caused a stretch of road running from Meizhou city toward Dabu county to cave in at around 2:10 am on Wednesday (1810 GMT Tuesday), according to state news agency Xinhua.
Vehicles careened into the nearly 18-meter-long (59-foot) gash in the tarmac and plummeted down the steep slope below.
Guangdong, a densely populated industrial powerhouse, has been hit by a string of disasters attributed to extreme weather events in recent weeks.
The storms have been much heavier than expected this time of year and have been linked to climate change.
China is the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change but has pledged to reduce emissions to net zero by 2060.
“As of 5:30 am on (Thursday)... 36 people have died, and 30 people have been injured,” Xinhua said, adding that the injuries were not life-threatening.
The death toll was up from 24 people on Wednesday afternoon.
Footage by state broadcaster CCTV showed excavators digging through the muddy hillside below the collapsed road.
Nearby, a crane lifted charred, wrecked vehicles onto a lorry as people watched from behind a cordon.
State media called the road collapse a “natural geological disaster” caused by the “impact of persistent heavy rain.”
President Xi Jinping ordered officials to “go all-out in on-site rescue work and treatment of the injured, and arrange for the management of risks and hidden dangers in a timely manner,” CCTV said on Thursday.
Around 500 people have been dispatched to help with the rescue operation, it added.
The provincial government has “mobilized elite specialized forces and gone all out to carry out... search and rescue,” according to Xinhua.
An official notice on Wednesday advised that part of the S12 highway was closed in both directions, requiring detours.
Parts of central and eastern Guangdong have received up to 600 millimeters of rain in the last 10 days, three times the amount normally expected at this time of year, the national weather office said Thursday.
Up to 120 millimeters more rain was forecast for the province’s southwestern areas on Thursday, alongside further downpours across southern China until Sunday.
The conditions “raise the risk of disasters, especially geological disasters, which have a certain lag time,” the weather office said.
The emergency management ministry also warned that persistent rain would make such disasters more likely.
Officials have warned people to plan journeys carefully during the May public holiday, which runs until Sunday.
Massive downpours in Guangdong last month sparked floods that claimed four lives and forced the evacuation of more than 100,000 people.
And last week, a tornado killed five people when it ripped through the megacity of Guangzhou.
Death toll from south China road collapse rises to 36
https://arab.news/72fdu
Death toll from south China road collapse rises to 36
- The death toll was up from 24 people on Wednesday afternoon
- Vehicles careened into the nearly 18-meter-long gash in the tarmac and plummeted down the steep slope below
US Justice Department official eyes cases against Cuba leaders as Trump floats ‘friendly takeover’
- “Working group” formed to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government
- Trump’s has increasingly displayed aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership
MIAMI: The top Justice Department prosecutor in Miami is considering criminal investigations of Cuban government officials, according to people familiar with the matter. The inquiry comes as President Donald Trump has raised the possibility of a “friendly takeover” of the communist-run island.
Jason Reding Quiñones, the US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, has created a “working group” that includes federal prosecutors and officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies to try to build cases against people connected to the Cuban government and its Communist Party, according to one of the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the effort.
It was not immediately clear which Cuban officials the office is targeting or what criminal charges prosecutors may be looking to bring.
The Justice Department said in a statement Friday that “federal prosecutors from across the country work every day to pursue justice, which includes efforts to combat transnational crime.”
The effort is taking place against the backdrop of Trump’s increasingly aggressive stance against Cuba’s communist leadership.
Emboldened by the US capture of Cuba’s close ally, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump last month said his administration was in high-level talks with officials in Havana to pursue “a friendly takeover” of the country. He repeated those claims this week, saying his attention would turn back to Cuba once the war with Iran winds down.
“They want to make a deal so bad,” Trump said of Cuba’s leadership.
While Cuba has faded from Washington’s radar as a major national security threat in recent decades, it remains a priority in the US Attorney’s office in Miami, whose political, economic and cultural life is dominated by Cuban-American exiles.
The FBI field office has a dedicated Cuba group that in 2024 was instrumental in the arrest of former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha on charges of serving as a secret agent of Cuba stretching back to the 1970s.
In recent weeks, several Miami Republicans, in addition to Florida Sen. Rick Scott, have called on the Trump administration to reopen its criminal investigation into the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by anti-communist exiles.
In a letter to Trump on Feb. 13, lawmakers including Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez highlighted decades-old news reports indicating that former President Raúl Castro — the head of Cuba’s military at the time — gave the order to shoot down the unarmed Cessna aircraft.
“We believe unequivocally that Raúl Castro is responsible for this heinous crime,” lawmakers wrote. “It is time for him to be brought to justice.”
While no indictment against Castro has been announced, Florida’s attorney general said this week that he would open a state-level investigation into the crime.
The Trump administration has also accused Cuba of not cooperating with American counterterrorism efforts, adding it alongside North Korea and Iran to a select few nations the US considers state sponsors of terrorism.
The designation stems from Cuba’s harboring of US fugitives and its refusal to extradite several Colombian rebel leaders while they were engaged in peace talks with the South American nation.
