PRAGUE: The death toll was rising in central European countries on Sunday after days of heavy rains caused widespread flooding and forced evacuations.
Several Central European nations have already been hit by severe flooding, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania. Slovakia and Hungary might come next as a result of a low pressure system from northern Italy dumping record rainfall in the region since Thursday.
The floods have claimed six lives in Romania and one each in Austria and Poland. In the Czech Republic, four people who were swept away by waters were missing, police said.
It’s not over yet
Most parts of the Czech Republic have been affected as authorities declared the highest flood warnings at around 100 places across the country. But the situation was worst in two northeastern regions that recorded the biggest rainfall in recent days, including the Jeseniky mountains near the Polish border.
In the city of Opava, up to 10,000 people out of a population of around 56,000 have been asked to move to higher ground. Rescuers used boats to transport people to safety in a neighborhood flooded by the raging Opava River.
“There’s no reason to wait,” Mayor Tomáš Navrátil told Czech public radio. He said that the situation was worse than during the last devastating floods in 1997, known as the “flood of the century.”
“We have to focus on saving lives,” Prime Minister Petr Fiala told Czech public television on Sunday. His government was set to meet Monday to assess the damages.
The worst “is not behind us yet,” the prime minister warned.
President Petr Pavel sounded more optimistic, saying “it’s obvious we’ve learned a lesson from the previous crisis.”
At least 4 missing and villages cut off
Thousands of others also were evacuated in the towns of Krnov, which was almost completely flooded, and Cesky Tesin. The Oder River that flows to Poland was reaching extreme levels in the city of Ostrava and in Bohumin, prompting evacuations.
Ostrava, the regional capital, is the third-largest Czech city. Mayor Jan Dohnal said the city will face major traffic disruptions in the days to come. Almost no trains were operating in the region.
Towns and villages in the Jeseniky mountains, including the local center of Jesenik, were inundated and isolated by raging waters that turned roads into rivers. The military sent a helicopter to help with evacuations.
Jesenik Mayor Zdenka Blistanova told Czech public television that several houses in her and other nearby towns have been destroyed by the floods. A number of bridges and roads have been badly damaged.
About 260,000 households were without power Sunday morning in the entire country, while traffic was halted on many roads, including the major D1 highway.
A firefighter dies as Lower Austria declared a disaster zone
A firefighter died after “slipping on stairs” while pumping out a flooded basement in the town of Tulln, the head of the fire department of Lower Austria, Dietmar Fahrafellner, told reporters on Sunday.
Authorities declared the entire state of Lower Austria in the northeastern part of the country a disaster zone, while 10,000 relief forces have so far evacuated 1,100 houses there. Emergency personnel have started setting up accommodation for residents who had to flee their homes due to the flooding.
The municipality of Lilienfeld with about 25,000 residents is cut off from the outside world. Residents were told to boil tap water as a precaution.
The situation is particularly dangerous along the Kamp River, which flows into the Danube. The Ottenstein reservoir on the river functions as a buffer, but exceeding its limits could cause more flooding, experts say.
Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer said the situation “continues to worsen.” He said 2,400 soldiers were ready to support the relief effort in Austria. Of those, 1,000 soldiers will deploy to the disaster zone in Lower Austria, where dams were beginning to burst.
“We are experiencing difficult and dramatic hours in Lower Austria. For many people in Lower Austria these will probably be the most difficult hours of their lives,” said Johanna Mikl-Leitner, the governor of Lower Austria.
In Vienna, the Wien River overflowed its banks, flooding homes and forcing first evacuations of nearby houses.
Romania reports 2 more flooding victims
Romanian authorities said Sunday that another two people had died in the hard-hit eastern county of Galati after four were reported dead there a day earlier, following unprecedented rain.
Dramatic flooding in Poland
In Poland, one person was presumed dead in floods in the southwest, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Sunday.
Tusk said the situation was “dramatic” around the town of Klodzko, with about 25,000 residents, located in a valley in the Sudetes mountains near the border with the Czech Republic. Helicopters were used to pick up people from roofs in a few cases.
In Glucholazy, rising waters overflowed a river embankment and flooded streets and houses. Mayor Paweł Szymkowicz said, “we are drowning,” and appealed to residents to evacuate to high ground.
A bridge in the town collapsed under the flood pressure and a police station building was knocked down in Stronie Śląskie, after floodwaters burst through a dam. Submerged cars could be seen in many places in the Kłodzko Valley region bordering the Czech Republic, while a new flood wave was expected there.
In the city of Jelenia Gora, which has 75,000 residents, downtown streets were flooded after one of the embankments burst on the Bobr River. City authorities have warned residents they may need to evacuate as more flooding was moving toward the city.
Energy supplies and communications were cut off in some flooded areas, and regions may resort to using the satellite-based Starlink service, Tusk said.
The weather change arrived following a hot start to September in the region. Scientists have documented Earth’s hottest summer, breaking a record set just a year ago.
A hotter atmosphere, driven by human-caused climate change, can lead to more intense rainfall.
Death toll rises as torrential rain and flooding force evacuations in central Europe
https://arab.news/n4mpm
Death toll rises as torrential rain and flooding force evacuations in central Europe
- Several countries have already been hit by severe flooding, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland and Romania
- The floods have claimed six lives in Romania and one each in Austria and Poland, while four were declared missing in Czech Republic
French government wants new immigration law in 2025
“There will be a need for a new law,” government spokeswoman Maud Bregeon told broadcaster BFMTV on Sunday.
The government’s plan to tighten immigration policies and border controls is emblematic of the rightward shift in French politics following this summer’s legislative elections that resulted in a hung parliament.
Michel Barnier’s government hopes the bill will be submitted to parliament at the beginning of 2025.
In September, a Paris student was raped and murdered in a case that has further inflamed a French debate on migration after a Moroccan was named as the suspected attacker.
The government wants to extend the detention period for undocumented migrants deemed to be dangerous in order to better enforce expulsion orders.
One of the options under consideration is to increase the maximum period of detention from 90 to 210 days, which is now only possible for terrorist offenses.
“We don’t rule out the possibility of considering other provisions,” said Bregeon, adding that there should be “no taboos when it comes to protecting the French.”
Last December, France already passed an immigration law.
The bill was hardened to gain the support of the far-right and right-wing MPs.
But the country’s highest constitutional authority censured most of the new amendments which were dropped before President Emmanuel Macron signed it into law.
The measures struck down by the Constitutional Council “will serve as a basis for the new immigration bill,” a government source told AFP. “Some of them could be modified and there will be additions.”
The most hard-line member of the government, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, has vowed to crack down on immigration. He has stirred controversy just days into the job, saying that “the rule of law is neither intangible nor sacred.”
Retailleau, who previously headed the Republicans party in the Senate, was seen as the driving force behind the tough legislation last year.
He wants to reinstate the offense of illegal residence, among other measures.
Gabriel Attal, Barnier’s predecessor and now leader in parliament of Macron’s Renaissance party, said on Monday that a new law on immigration did not seem a “total priority.”
“Adopting a law for the sake of a law makes no sense,” he told broadcaster France inter.
He said “the priority is to act so that the state can truly control who enters and leaves” France.
Ukraine says destroyed army transport plane in Russia
Ukraine has stepped up attacks inside Russian territory in recent months, targeting military sites and energy facilities, aiming to upend Russian military logistics.
Kyiv’s military intelligence agency said it had destroyed the Tu-134 transport aircraft overnight between Saturday and Sunday at a military airfield in the Orenburg region, which lies around 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the border with Ukraine.
“These Soviet-built airplanes are used mainly to transport leadership of the Russian defense ministry,” the Defense Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine said on social media.
The agency posted footage of what Ukraine said was an arson attack, showing a blaze burning inside an aircraft, but it did not provide details of how the alleged attack was carried out.
There was no immediate comment on the specific claims from Moscow.
Since the start of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has detained hundreds of people for alleged sabotage and arson attacks on military, railway and other infrastructure sites.
EU condemns all attacks on UN missions, foreign policy chief Borrell says
- Israel has disputed some UN accounts of incidents involving UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they were providing “human shields” for Hezbollah militants
AMSTERDAM: The European Union condemns all attacks against United Nations missions, the union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said in a response to targeting of the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, by the Israel Defense Forces.
“Such attacks against UN peacekeepers constitute a grave violation of international law and are totally unacceptable. These attacks must stop immediately,” Borrell said in a statement on behalf of the EU published Sunday night.
“The EU condemns all attacks against UN missions,” Borrell said.
“It expresses particularly grave concern regarding the attacks by the Israeli Defense Forces against UNIFIL, which left several peacekeepers wounded.”
Israel has disputed some UN accounts of incidents involving UNIFIL peacekeepers in Lebanon, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said they were providing “human shields” for Hezbollah militants during an upsurge in hostilities.
In his statement, Borrell said “all actors” in the conflict have the obligation to ensure the safety and security of UN personnel and property.
“We urgently await explanations and a thorough investigation from the Israeli authorities about the attacks against UNIFIL, which plays a fundamental role in the stability of South Lebanon,” he said.
North Korea set to blow up cross-border roads with South amid drone row, Seoul says
- North Korean troops were working under camouflage on the roads on its side of the border near the west and east coasts
SEOUL: North Korea is getting ready to blow up roads that cross the heavily militarised border with South Korea, Seoul said on Monday, amid an escalating war of words after the North accused its rival of sending drones over its capital Pyongyang.
North Korean troops were working under camouflage on the roads on its side of the border near the west and east coasts that are likely preparations to blow up the roads, possibly as early as on Monday, South Korea’s military spokesman said.
Last week, North Korea’s Army said it would completely cut roads and railways connected to South Korea and fortify the areas on its side of the border, state media KCNA reported.
Separately, North Korea on Friday accused South Korea of sending drones to scatter a “huge number” of anti-North leaflets over Pyongyang, in what it called a political and military provocation that could lead to armed conflict.
Lee Sung-jun, a spokesman for the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, declined on Monday to answer questions over whether the South Korean military or civilians flew the drones.
In further statements over the weekend, North Korea warned of a “horrible disaster” if South Korean drones were again found to be flying over Pyongyang. On Sunday, it said it has put eight fully armed artillery units at the border “on standby to open fire.”
South Korea’s military has said its refusal to answer questions on the drones is because addressing what the North has alleged would be to get drawn into a tactic by Pyongyang to fabricate excuses for provocations.
South Korea has sought to boost its anti-drone defenses since 2022, Lee said, when five North Korean drones entered its airspace and flew over the capital Seoul for several hours.
Lee Kyoung-haing, an expert in military drone operations at Jungwon University, said civilians would have no trouble getting drones with ranges of 300 km, the round trip from the South to Pyongyang, with light payloads such as leaflets.
On Sunday, North Korea’s defense ministry said the drones, which it said were detected over Pyongyang on three days earlier this month, were the kind that required a special launcher or a runway and it was impossible a civilian group could launch them.
The two Koreas are still technically at war after their 1950-53 war ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
The cross-border links are remnants of periods of rapprochement between the countries including a 2018 summit between the leaders when they declared there would be no more war and a new era of peace had opened.
North Korea has reintroduced heavy weapons into the Demilitarized Zone border buffer and restored guard posts, after the two sides declared a 2018 military agreement aimed at easing tensions no longer valid.
Russia says more than 30,000 evacuated from areas bordering Ukraine
- Ukrainian forces turned the tables against aggressor Russia by launching an incursion into the Kursk region in August, taking control of dozens of settlements and holding most positions since
KYIV: Some 30,415 people including nearly 8,000 children have been evacuated from areas bordering Ukraine due to shelling and attacks, Russia’s human rights commissioner said in remarks published on Monday.
Tatyana Moskalkova, the commissioner, told news outlet Argumenty I Fakty in an interview that the evacuees have been placed in nearly 1,000 temporary accommodation centers across Russia.
Ukraine, subjected to an invasion from Russia since February 2022, has retaliated with shelling and other attacks on Russia’s border regions, with the military saying the strikes target infrastructure key to Moscow’s war effort.
Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into the Kursk region in August, taking control of dozens of settlements and holding most positions since.
Moskalkova said she had received appeals regarding more than 1,000 Russian citizens from Kursk, whose whereabouts are unknown and who were said to have been taken by Ukrainian forces.
Reuters could not independently verify Moskalkova’s reports. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Both sides deny targeting or imprisoning civilians but thousands have died in the war, the vast majority of them Ukrainians.
Moskalkova also told the news outlet that she has visited more than 2,000 Ukrainian prisoners of war in Russia and that similar visits with Russian prisoners have been conducted by her counterpart in Ukraine.
