HANOI: Heavy rain, severe flooding and landslides in Vietnam have killed at least 90 people in the last week, authorities said Sunday, leaving others stranded on rooftops and mountain roadways blocked.
Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October and popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding, with economic losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Whole sections of coastal Nha Trang city were inundated last week, while deadly landslides struck highland passes around the Da Lat tourist hub.
In the hard-hit mountainous province of Dak Lak, 61-year-old farmer Mach Van Si said the floodwaters left him and his wife stranded on their sheet-metal rooftop for two nights.
“Our neighborhood was completely destroyed. Nothing was left. Everything was covered in mud,” he said on Sunday.
By the time they climbed a ladder to their roof, Si said he was no longer scared.
“I just thought we were going to die because there was no way out,” he said.
More than 60 deaths, of the 90 recorded since November 16, were in Dak Lak, where tens of thousands of homes were inundated, the environment ministry said in a statement.
‘Big soggy mess’
At the Tuy Hoa market in the province, the floodwaters have receded but Vo Huu Du, 40, said some of the hats, bags and shoes she sells were still soaked or lying in mud.
“My goods look like one big soggy mess,” she said. “I don’t even know where to start.”
She and other vendors once considered five centimeters (two inches) off the ground a safe level to raise their merchandise to avoid flood damage — but no more.
“All these years, the highest water level back in 1993 only reached our ankles,” said Du. “But now the water has come in over one meter (three feet) high.”
“All the vendors are devastated, not just me,” she added.
Ceramics seller Nguyen Van Thoai, 60, gestured to piles of damaged goods to be cleared from paths between vendor stalls, calling it “a real loss.”
“I don’t even know where to put all this market stock,” he said. “We might need to clean it for a month and still won’t be done.”
More than 80,000 hectares (200,000 acres) of rice and other crops across Dak Lak and four other provinces were damaged in the last week, with over 3.2 million livestock or poultry killed or washed away by floodwaters.
Authorities have used helicopters to airdrop aid to communities cut off by flooding and landslides, with the government deploying tens of thousands of personnel to deliver clothing, water-purification tablets, instant noodles and other supplies to affected areas, state outlet Tuoi Tre News said.
Several locations on national highways remained blocked on Sunday due to flooding or landslides, according to the environment ministry, and some railway sections were still suspended.
The ministry estimated economic losses of $343 million across five provinces due to the floods.
Natural disasters have left 279 people dead or missing in Vietnam and caused more than $2 billion in damage between January and October, according to the national statistics office.
The Southeast Asian nation is prone to heavy rain between June and September, but scientists have identified a pattern of human-driven climate change making extreme weather more frequent and destructive.
Vietnam flooding kills at least 90
https://arab.news/8x3rp
Vietnam flooding kills at least 90
- Relentless rain has lashed south-central Vietnam since late October
- Popular holiday destinations have been hit by several rounds of flooding
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
