MADRID: Spain and Portugal on Saturday braced for another storm heading for the Iberian peninsula, just days after the floods caused by Storm Leonardo killed at least one person in each country.
The latest depression, christened Storm Marta, has prompted the deployment of more than 26,500 rescuers in Portugal, where the foul weather has led three municipalities to postpone Sunday’s presidential vote till next week.
Both countries have issued warnings over the potential fresh floods, after inundations blocked hundreds of roads, disrupted trains and forced thousands to evacuate from the rising waters.
Mario Silvestre, commander in Portugal’s civil protection agency, warned that the forecast was “extremely worrying,” as quoted by the Lusa press agency.
His organization fears gusts of wind reaching 110 kilometers per hour after Marta reaches the Portuguese coastline, along with landslides and flash floods.
“All the furniture is completely destroyed, the water broke the window, forced the doors open and then burst through the window from the other side,” Francisco Marques, a municipal employee in the central village of Constancia, said.
After flying over flood-hit areas in southern Spain near Cadiz on Friday, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez warned that “difficult days” lay ahead for the region as a result of the “very dangerous” weather forecast.
The Socialist premier is due to visit rescuers in Madrid on Saturday.
Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, who paid a visit to the afflicted regions on Friday, warned that the damage exceeded €4 billion ($4.7 billion), according to a still-provisional toll.
Portugal was already reeling from the effects of Storm Kristin, which led to the deaths of five people, injured hundreds and left tens of thousands without power, when Leonardo hit earlier this week.
Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of extreme weather events, such as the floods and heatwaves that have struck both countries in recent years.
Spain, Portugal brace for fresh storm after flood deaths
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Spain, Portugal brace for fresh storm after flood deaths
- Both countries have issued warnings over the potential fresh floods after inundations blocked hundreds of roads
- Scientists say human-driven climate change is increasing the length, intensity and frequency of extreme weather events
US labels Sudan’s Muslim Brotherhood as ‘terrorists’
- Designation comes after the US in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations
WASHINGTON: The United States said Monday it will label the Muslim Brotherhood in Sudan as a terrorist organization and accused the group of receiving support from Iran.
The designation, which will be effective in a week, comes after the United States in January declared several other Muslim Brotherhood branches to be terrorist organizations, including in its historic base of Egypt.
“The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood uses unrestrained violence against civilians to undermine efforts to resolve the conflict in Sudan and advance its violent Islamist ideology,” the State Department said in a statement.
The Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood “has contributed upwards of 20,000 fighters to the war in Sudan, many receiving training and other support from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the elite ideological wing of Tehran’s military, the State Department said.
The State Department accused the Sudanese Muslim Brotherhood of having “conducted mass executions of civilians in areas they captured.”
Iran, run by Shiite clerics, and the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni organization that historically had extensive social networks inside Egypt, both have supported Sudan’s army.
The army has been engaged for nearly three years in a brutal civil war against the paramilitary Rapid Support Force (RSF), with the fighting claiming tens of thousands of lives, displacing more than 11 million people and plunging areas into famine-like conditions.
The United States last year said that the RSF has carried out acts of genocide with systematic killings and sexual violence against black Sudanese. The United States also said the army carried out war crimes.
Targeting the Muslim Brotherhood has also been a rallying cry in Washington for some conservative Republicans, in part over unfounded conspiracy theories that the group is trying to impose Islamic sharia law in the United States.
